The Japanese company Kobayashi Pharmaceutical announced on Friday that it had identified 76 additional deaths potentially linked to its anti-cholesterol food supplements containing red yeast rice, at the heart of a resounding health scandal in Japan for several months.
In a previous update on the case in April, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical reported five deaths potentially linked to its products, which have since been withdrawn from the market. That initial number has since been reduced to four. This brings the provisional total of suspected deaths in the case to 80. The causes of the deaths “still need to be verified by doctors” and so the final number may drop, the company said Friday. the AFP an agent of the Japanese Ministry of Health.
Many people who had consumed these food supplements, suspected of causing kidney problems, have also been 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 certain people, according to a press release from Kobayashi Pharmaceutical.
Concretely, these products have often created comorbidity situations, worsening the health of people who already suffered from other illnesses. The Osaka (western Japan) firm only communicated on the matter after mid-March by announcing the recall of three product ranges, when it had received a first worrying report from a doctor from January 15.
At the end of March, the company said it had identified puberulic acid, a toxic substance naturally produced by mold, in batches of its recalled products. But the pharmaceutical company and Japanese health authorities are still working to understand precisely why and how this massive health scandal occurred. Japan’s Health Ministry has now ordered Kobayashi Pharmaceutical to provide it with a daily report on its internal investigation.
“Until now (editor’s note: the company) had not reported the precise number of cases examined, which is extremely regrettable,” Japanese government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi responded to the press on Friday.
Red yeast rice (called “beni koji” in Japan) has been used for centuries in East Asia in food, alcoholic beverages and traditional Chinese medicine for its digestive and circulation-enhancing properties.
This yeast contains a natural statin, monacolin K, which can inhibit cholesterol synthesis. As Kobayashi Pharmaceutical had indicated in late March that it had also produced red yeast rice for around fifty other companies in Japan and Taiwan, many of these companies had in turn carried out emergency recalls of their own products containing this yeast, such as sparkling sake, salad dressing or fermented soybean paste (“miso”).
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