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in April, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical reported five deaths potentially associated with its products, which have since been withdrawn from the market.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 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 dietary supplements, suspected of causing kidney problems, were also hospitalized.
“Even if the direct cause of hospitalization or death is not kidney disease”, it has “become clear” that in certain cases, the consumption of the products in question has 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.
– “Extremely regrettable” –
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 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 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-improving properties. .
This yeast contains a natural statin, monacolin K, capable of inhibiting cholesterol synthesis.
As Kobayashi Pharmaceutical indicated at the end of 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 issued emergency recalls of their own products containing this yeast, such as sparkling sake, salad dressing, or fermented soy paste (“miso”).
Kobayashi Pharmaceutical’s shares fell 7 percent in late trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Friday, having plunged 22 percent since the start of the year due to the scandal.
