A total of 20 chronic headache cases in which other Kampo medicines were ineffective or hardly effective were treated with Kumi-binro-to extract, and the effect of this medicine was investigated.
At the start of administration, we investigated the following items: any deficiency or excess, presence or absence of stagnation of vital energy (facial erythema, ophthalmologic injection, bitter taste in the mouth, etc.) and disease caused by contaminated water (tendency of edema, sound of fluctuating liquid in the region of the stomach, decreased urine volume) as well as the presence or absence of grasping pain (pressure pain) in the gastrocnemius muscle which is a characteristic symptom as a target of this drug. The efficacy of Kumi-binro-to was assessed by a pain score after weeks from the start of administration.
Kumi-binro-to was markedly effective in 5 cases, effective in 11 cases and ineffective in 4 cases, indicating that the ratio of markedly effective and effective cases accounted for 80% of the patients treated. There was no adverse reaction. When the characteristics of 16 cases assessed as markedly effective or effective were investigated, disease caused by contaminated water and stagnation of vital energy was observed in 13 and 14 of the 16 cases respectively. The grasping pain in the gastrocnemius muscle that is a characteristic target of this drug was noted in only one case.
The above result suggests that Kumi-binro-to promotes diuresis to eliminate wetness-evil and regulates vital energy, and is effective against chronic headache, especially when the disease caused by contaminated water is accompanied with stagnation of vital energy.

The prevention of dementia is an important issue that should be addressed in Japan. To prevent dementia, it is important to implement interventions (e.g., exercise or cognitive training) for the healthy community-dwelling elderly. However, such interventions are not always evidence-based. In this review, we evaluated exercise and cognitive training intervention protocols for the prevention of dementia based on recent findings. In addition, we proposed specific methods for implementing such interventions in the community.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the effect of nutritional status on estimated fentanyl absorption in cancer patients being treated with a fentanyl transdermal patch (FP), by measuring the residual fentanyl content in used patches. Methods: 24 adult Japanese inpatients receiving FP treatment for chronic cancer-related pain were enrolled. During FP application, the nutritional risk of the patients was measured using the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) and Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002), both of which are nutrition screening tools used widely in Japan. We then classified the patients into low-, medium-, and high-risk groups according to the nutritional risk measured by MUST, and compared the transdermal fentanyl delivery efficiency (FE) between that groups. Results: The FE, which is estimated by the residual fentanyl content in used FPs collected from the patients, was found to be decreased in the high-risk group. According to NRS 2002, the mean transdermal fentanyl delivery efficiency in the high-risk group was significantly lower than that in the low-risk group. Conclusion: These results showed that changes in nutritional status affect FE, and that poor nutritional status might decrease transdermal fentanyl absorption in cancer patients.

In this study, we investigated whether a difference in the angular velocity has an effect on proprioceptive sensibility in 30 healthy subjects. Knee detection of passive motion at five angular velocities (0.1°/s, 0.2°/s, 0.3°/s, 0.4°/s, and 0.5°/s) was carried out from a starting position of 15° knee flexion for extension using a proprioception testing device. At 0.1°/s, the elapsed time was longer than that of the other angular velocities and the angular displacement was bigger as well. There were no significant differences among the remaining angular velocities (0.2～0.5°/s). Therefore it is suggested that a healthy knee has less proprioception at an angular velocity of 0.1°/s.