ABSTRACT
A 47-year-old woman visited our clinic, and thereafter she had taken various Kampo medicines until she turned 58 years old. She took each medicine, containing 1-3.5 g/day of glycyrrhiza, for one or two months. Hypertension or edema was not observed in those days. From the age of 60, she took 7.5 g of tokishigyakukagoshuyushokyoto, containing 2 g of glycyrrhiza, day after day. Hypertension or edema was not observed for 35 months. However, when she was 63 years old, pseudoaldosteronism with headache, hypertension, edema,and hypopotassemia was observed for the first time. This case suggests that administration period or patient's age influences the development of pseudoaldosteronism.
ABSTRACT
Recently, basophil activation test (BAT) has been applied to the diagnosis of drug allergy. We performed BAT for various Kampo medicines taken by 12 cooperators to evaluate the concentration which arouse nonspecific reaction during incubation in BAT. When whole blood of each was incubated for 24 hours with each Kampo medicine, false positive results were frequently observed. After 1-hour incubation with Kampo medicine at high concentration (1/312.5), false positive results were sometimes observed. These results suggest that in the diagnosis of Kampo-medicine adverse reactions, BAT should be performed in the condition of 1-hour incubation with lower concentration (1/1250 or lower).
ABSTRACT
Incidence of glycyrrhiza-induced pseudoaldosteronism is not well understood. We examined relationships between pseudoaldosteronism incidence and daily glycyrrhiza dose in previous clinical studies. The incidence in patients administered glycyrrhiza 1 g/day was 1.0% (mean). The incidence with 2 g/day, 4 g/day and 6 g/day were 1.7% (mean), 3.3% and 11.1% (mean), respectively. Thus a dose-dependent trend toward pseudoaldosteronism incidence was suggested by previous literature.
ABSTRACT
We evaluated the efficacy of yokukansan-based prescriptions for patients with headache. Forty-five patients with headache (34 migraine, 6 tension-type, and 5 combined headaches), or 6 males and 39 females, mean age 38 (25 to 68) years were treated with yokukansan-based prescriptions according to their Sho diagnosis, for 1 to 24 months. Relationships between headache improvement, and 31 factors including age, sex, height, body weight and other symptoms at first examination, were qualified with multi-dimensional analysis. Factors such as painful eye sensation, back stiffness, eyestrain and irritability were significant indicators of headache improvement. Three of these factors (painful eye sensation, back stiffness and irritability) were the best subset of explanatory variables. Yokukansan-based prescriptions seemed to be effective for “liver-related” headache, and were thought to be useful to relieve a triggering or worsening of headache factors. And to our knowledge, this is the first paper to propose the importance of examinations of the back, when considering yokukansan-based prescriptions.