Boi-ogi-to is frequently prescribed to relieve pain for osteoarthritis in the therapy of Kampo formulation. However, it has been pointed out that the evaluation of this formulation differs among the patients. It is often showed lower effectiveness and/or non-effectiveness in the patients with advanced roentgenographic deformity, obesity, and suffering from more severe pain.
We thought that it was resulted from ingoring the abdominal-sho (symptom). Therefore, in this study, we defined the abdominal-sho of Boi-ogi-to as “frog abdominal-sho”, and administered Boi-ogi-to to 17 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee who had frog abdominal sho. As a result, in the patients with frog abdominal-sho, the formulation was moderately or even better effective in relieving pain in 77% of these patients. It was acknowledged that the effect was independent of the severity of pain, the degree of obesity, and whether the roentgenographic deformity was slight or moderate.