The pharmaceutical group Kobayashi Pharmaceutical announced on Friday June 28 that it was analyzing the cases of 76 additional deaths potentially linked to some of its anti-cholesterol food supplements. The Japanese company has been at the center of a vast health scandal for several months concerning its nutritional products containing red yeast rice.
During a previous update on this matter in April, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical reported five deaths potentially linked to its products, which have since been withdrawn from the market. This initial number had since been reduced to four. The provisional toll is 80 suspicious deaths in this case.
Many people who had taken the supplements, which appear to cause kidney problems, have also been hospitalized. According to a statement from Kobayashi Pharmaceutical, “even if the direct cause of hospitalization or death is not[était] not kidney disease”he is “became clear” that, in certain cases, the consumption of the products in question had “indirectly” adverse effects on people’s health.
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The Japanese company only communicated on the subject after mid-March by announcing the recall of three product lines. However, she had received a first worrying report from a doctor on January 15. At the end of March, the company said it had identified a toxic substance naturally produced by mold in batches of its recalled products.
Kobayashi Pharmaceutical and Japanese health authorities are still working to understand precisely why and how this massive health scandal occurred.
