Resounding health scandal: more than 80 suspicious deaths

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.

During a previous update on this matter in April, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical reported five deaths potentially associated with its products, which have since been withdrawn from the market. This initial number had since been reduced to four.

This therefore brings the provisional total of suspicious deaths in this case to 80.

The causes of these deaths “still need to be verified by doctors” and therefore it is possible that the final number will drop, a Japanese health ministry official told AFP on Friday.

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.

In concrete terms, these products have often created situations of comorbidity, by 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 struggling 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 (the company, editor’s note) 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, capable of inhibiting cholesterol synthesis.

As Kobayashi Pharmaceutical said in late March that it had also produced red yeast rice for about 50 other companies in Japan and Taiwan, many of these companies in turn issued emergency recalls of their own products containing the yeast, such as sparkling sake, salad dressing and fermented soybean paste (“miso”).

Kobayashi Pharmaceutical’s shares collapsed by 7% on Friday at the end of trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It has fallen 22% since the start of the year because of this scandal.