(Tokyo) The Japanese company Kobayashi Pharmaceutical announced Friday that it had identified 76 additional deaths potentially linked to its cholesterol-lowering 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in April, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical reported five deaths potentially associated with its products, which have since been withdrawn from the market.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 “must still be verified by doctors” and therefore it is possible that the final number will drop, an official from the Japanese Ministry of Health 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 “indirectly” had 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 firm (in western Japan) only announced the case after mid-March, announcing the recall of three product ranges, although it had received an initial worrying report from a doctor on 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 [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-improving properties. .
This yeast contains a natural statin, monacolin K, which can inhibit 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”).
Shares of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical collapsed 7% in late trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Friday. It has fallen 22% since the start of the year because of this scandal.