History of Kampo Extracts for Medical Use / 日本東洋医学雑誌

ABSTRACT

In 1944, Dr Takeshi Itakura, director of the Eastern Therapeutics Institute, intended to perform controlled clinical trials with Kampo extracts, but gave up following the defeat in the Second World War. Japanese public insurance coverage of Kampo treatment started in 1961. Permission for medical use of six Kampo extracts was granted in 1967. This was increased to 848 products made with 148 formulas in 2000. The book, <i>Ippan-yo Kampo Shoho no Tebiki</i> (guide to general Kampo prescriptions) describing approval standards for Kampo extracts was published in 1975 and revised in 2008.The adverse effects of shosaikoto in 1996 forced the Japanese Society for Oriental medicine to establish the EBM Committee to prove that Kampo medicine was evidence-based. The first report on clinical evidence for Kampo was published in 2005. In 2001, the study of Japanese herbal medicine became compulsory in the medical education system. A petition against removing Kampo drugs from public insurance in 2009 showed that people hoped doctors would continue to be able to prescribe Kampo drugs under insurance systems.