We report two cases in which the quality of life of children with chromosomal aberration improved with Kampo treatment. Case 1 : Six-year-old boy with 5p deletion syndrome. We prescribed kambakutaisoto for the purpose of treating excitability and insomnia. After adding shokenchuto, and further using with yokukansan, the degree of excitement was obviously reduced, and he began to sleep well until morning. Case 2 : Two-year-old boy with chromosome 8 abnormality. He had failed extubation after thoracotomy, thus he needed tracheostomy and gastrostomy. Frequent sputum suction was required every 5 to 15 minutes, and he suffered chronic diarrhea. The number of suctioning was decreased after treatment with bukuryoingohangekobokuto. Moreover, after the addition of shokenchuto, suction became unnecessary for more than 2 hours, and diarrhea also improved. After surgery to close tracheostomy site, he has been receiving ogikenchuto + shoseiryuto + ninjinto and is very well enough to go to a nursery school. Although it is a small improvement not involved in life prognosis, it has contributed to the improvement of the quality of life and the reduction of burden on caregivers. We believe that it is one of the significance of providing Kampo treatment for children.

The Japan Society for Oriental Medicine has established various committees, which are working every day to disseminate Japanese traditional herbal medicine (Kampo) and support the activities of academic members. As the members of the International Committee and the medical doctors who conduct research and clinical practice of Kampo at the university hospital, the authors participated in the 14th International Congress on Complementary Medicine Research held in Australia in May 2019. To improve the international recognition and international dissemination of Japanese Kampo, we held the Japanese Kampo Symposium on gastrointestinal diseases successfully. While it was realized that there was an international big interest in Japanese Kampo, it seemed that Kampo researchers in Japan lack the ability to dispatch of information at international conferences compared to neighboring countries such as Korea and China.

A 72-year-old man with proton pump inhibitor (PPI)-resistant gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) had been complaining of ructus, sore throat, and mid-back pain during the night despite the administration of the standard dose of PPI. As his symptoms improved rapidly after taking bukuryoin, he discontinued PPI on his own judgment. However, his nocturnal symptoms relapsed. Adding hangeshashinto before bedtime was so effective that he could cease using PPI. However, upper endoscopy revealed poor mucosal findings such as Grade D in the Los Angeles classification of GERD ; we increased the dose of hangeshashinto to 3 times a day and added orengedokuto before going to bed. His subjective symptoms completely disappeared, however, we could not operate endoscopy again during our intervention. It seems that not only rikkunshito which is recommended in the guideline for GERD but also other Kampo formulas were possibly effective to PPI-resistant GERD. Although endoscopic findings are not always correlative to their subjective complaints, we need further discussion on the endpoint of Kampo therapy to prevent complications.

A 70-year-old woman was diagnosed with peripheral T-cell lymphoma and received chemotherapy. She developed chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), and her chief complaint was numbness of her fingertips and toes. However, the symptoms did not change even 9 months after the chemotherapy was completed. Our Kampo diagnosis was dual deficiency of qi (ki) and blood. Hence, we applied pedestal moxibustions to the following acupuncture points : SP 6 (Sanyinjiao), Ex-LE 10 (Bafeng), Ex-UE 9 (Baxie), CV 4 (Guanyuan). Her symptoms improved rapidly after moxibustion treatment. There were neither adverse events nor relapse of the numbness. Moxibustion treatment might reduce symptoms of CIPN.

There is a well-­known “kuketsu : traditional oral instruction for using Kampo formula”, for yokukansan and yokukansankachimpihange (yokukansan group) which mentioned about the importance of existence of “an­ger”. It says that responders to yokukansan group are likely to be irascible. However, no statistically analyzed report about the accuracy of this “kuketsu” is published to date. Therefore, we retrospectively analyzed the charts of patients at one institution who had been treated with yokukansan group by multivariate analysis. We selected amelioration of their chief complaints as dependent variable ; ten items from inquiry as independent variables. The number of patients was 32 (male 12, female 20), mean age was 47.3. “Gender” and “irascible” were statistically significant in logistic regression analysis. The adjusted odds ratio of male versus female was 21.7, while being “irascible” versus not being “irascible” was 8.2. Yokukansan group seemed to be more ef­fective if patients were male or irascible in this study.