Ophiocordyceps sinensis (wild caterpillar fungus)

The pharmacology paper is a review and reports no human half-life figure. Its interest is in engineering cordycepin into something usable, with an enzyme inhibitor, a redesigned molecule or a new delivery system, none of which exists in a capsule. And it never asks the separate question of whether the amounts in a supplement would matter even if they did survive.

Ten samples in total, five per group, which is small for a statement about a market. Two of the authors work for a company selling authentication testing, which is a commercial interest in the standard markers failing. The paper set out to propose better markers, so that failure is its starting premise rather than a measured rate.

Both are method papers: they show substitution happens without reporting how often it happens across a defined slice of the market. The products were bought in Asia, so the rate may not carry over to Western shelves. And DNA says which species is present, not how much of the product it accounts for.

This is a review of the Chinese industry rather than Western retail, and it describes those names rather than counting how often they appear. One author works for a cordyceps manufacturer, though the paper argues against loose labelling rather than for it. The authors say two of the fungi they discuss need further study before their place is settled.

Two of the three tested multi-ingredient products, one of them eight ingredients deep, so none of this isolates cordyceps from what it was mixed with. Every participant was young and already trained, which is where there is least room left to improve. The shortest of the three ran fifteen days.

Whether cordyceps improves endurance is unsettled. A pooled analysis reports gains that only just clear chance, while the three best-powered single trials found none, which says more about how thin this research is than about who is right.