Japanese company Kobayashi Pharmaceuticals announced Friday that it is investigating 76 additional deaths potentially linked to its cholesterol-lowering supplements containing red yeast rice, a major health scandal in the country for several months.
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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in April, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical reported five deaths potentially linked to its products, which have since been withdrawn from the market.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 has since been reduced to four.
This therefore brings the provisional total of suspicious deaths in this case to 80.
Many people who had consumed these dietary supplements, which appeared to cause kidney problems, were also hospitalized.
“Even if the direct cause of hospitalization or death is not kidney disease”, it “became clear” that in certain cases, the consumption of the products in question had “indirectly” harmful repercussions on the condition health of people, according to a press release from Kobayashi Pharmaceutical.
The company had only communicated on the subject after mid-March by announcing the recall of three ranges of products, whereas it had received an initial worrying report from a doctor on January 15.
In late March, the company said it had identified puberulic acid, a toxic substance naturally produced by mold, in batches of its recalled products.
But the company and Japanese health authorities are still working to understand precisely why and how this massive health scandal occurred.
