Background: As a complementary medicine we have evaluated the efficacy of Benihuuki green tea, which contains methylated form of tea catechin reported stronger anti-allergic activities than ordinary catechin, on Japanese Cedar Pollinosis (JCP) in comparison with Yabukita green tea, contains ordinary catechin. This study was carried out during the pollination season, Feb.–April, in 2005.
Method: Four hundred eighty six patients with JCP, visiting 12 otorhinolaryngology clinics in Fukuoka prefecture were divided into A and B groups and subjected to quasi-single blind clinical trials. Under ordinary conditions, A-group patients took Benihuuki green tea and B-group took Yabukita green tea every day from February 1^st to the end of Japanese cedar and Cupressaceae pollination season. We compared nose and eye symptom scores, medication scores and disturbance of quality of life (QOL).
Result: There were no differences observed between the two groups with respect to their symptom scores and the disturbance of QOL. However, decreasing trend of the medication scores was observed in A-group (p < 0.1).
Conclusion: It has been suggested that Benihuuki green tea is a possible candidate as a complementary medicine for JCP during the pollination season.

  In 2008, Japanese Society of Drug Informatics (JASDI) organized the Future Vision Committee (the Committee) to propose the essential focus of drug informatics.  To explore a future vision about the drug information sciences, it was necessary to collect a variety of opinions widely from researchers.  Therefore, at the 11^th annual meeting of JASDI in July 5-6, 2008, the Committee convened a workshop to extract problems in the researches of drug informatics by using KJ method and evaluated the contents.  The major problems raised were “the field of drug informatics is too broad” and “there is no definition and/or no system of the drug informatics”.  Related problems raised are the shortness of the history and lack of originality in the study.  From different viewpoints, it was also pointed out that the methodology of the research is not well established and no systematic education is provided.  Taken together, major problems in drug informatics are concluded to be the lack of definition and the lack of systematizations, and will be solved to a certain extent by defining the outcome of the researches in drug informatics.