Elderly people with chronic lung diseases are always suffered from dyspnea, so they also have much troubles in gastrointestinal functions on the basis of anxiety and insomnia. As a result, they become malnourished with a weakened immune system and are often hospitalized due to respiratory infections for a long time. Their quality of life deteriorates. This time, we experienced an elderly female patient with old pulmonary tuberculosis who was generalized weakness, showed improved appetite loss, physical activity, and dementia symptoms by taking ninjin'yoeito and kososan. She could avoid re-hospitalization due to respiratory infections. Ninjin'yoeito enhanced her energy and physical strength. As a result, she seems to have become markedly healthy. This prescription is expected to be useful for the rapidly increasing number of elderly patients with chronic lung diseases.

The number of elderly people with chronic heart failure is increasing ; they have acute exacerbations at a high rate due to mergers of infections and others. At that time, they received furosemide intravenous injection and tolvaptan oral medication as internal treatments. However, there are refractory patients (tolvaptan nonresponder) at a certain frequency. In these cases we experienced two cases in which goreisan were effective for untreatable congestive heart failure. Goreisan administration resulted in an increase in urine volume in both cases, marked improvements in symptoms, physiological findings and various laboratory findings. In addition, they continued taking these medicines after discharge. As a result, for about a year, they were never rehospitalized due to heart failure. It is conceivable that goreisan normalized the uneven distribution of water in organs and tissues, and reactivated the action of tolvaptan in the renal collecting duct. These results suggest that the combined use of goreisan will be useful for untreatable congestive heart failure.

Number of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients tend to increase in middle and older aged people. They have shown a certain degree of improvement with various Western medicine treatments including smoking cessation guidance, rehabilitation, home oxygen therapy, inhalation therapy and so on. However, it is a clinical problem that some elderly people have acute exacerbations frequently due to infectious diseases and have poor prognoses. This time, we experienced an elderly COPD patient with type II respiratory failure. He was repeatedly hospitalized and needed treatment with a ventilator temporarily. We conducted Kampo medical examination on him, and diagnosed that he had cold state in the lungs. So, we administered ryokankyomishingeninto to him. As a result, he recovered dramatically, and he was never hospitalized again due to respiratory failure for a long time. It is suggested that ryokankyomishingeninto may be effective for some COPD patients who have cold state in the lungs.

Molecularly-targeted agents such as cetuximab, an anti-EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) monoclonal antibody have been used for the treatment of head and neck cancer. However, these agents frequently induce adverse skin reactions including acne-like rash and paronychia. For these problems, minocycline oral and heparinoid or steroid ointments, are commonly used. Some patients, however, cannot be controlled just by using these drugs. This case report shows a man in his 50s, who was treated for recurrence of nasal cancer. He received a long-term cetuximab therapy for 1 year and a half, and had severe paronychia and skin rash. Medication of unseiin and shiunko ointment decreased these adverse skin reactions, especially, paronychia on his first toes didn't need to be treated by steroid ointment anymore. When the common skin therapies are not effective, these Kampo therapies are possibly one of the options for the supportive care for the patients using cetuximab.

The lifetime incidence of cancer in women is about 50%, with some gynecological cancers increasing, and the prevalence of depression in patients is assumed to be about 12-25%1）. Depression is thought to affect not only suicide but also death from cancer2）, and it is important to provide psychological care to patients as survivors from the time they are diagnosed with cancer. Psychotropic drugs are often chosen for treatment, but side effects such as extrapyramidal symptoms, drowsiness, and constipation are observed, and the quality of life of cancer patients can be increasingly compromised.In this article, we report on seven cases of gynecological cancer survivors who experienced significant efficacy of kososan for the depression and anxiety resulting from stress they felt during various processes such as diagnosis, notification, treatment, recurrence, and best supportive care (BSC). Kososan is a qi-regulating formula, and its efficacy in improving depression has been described since ancient times. In particular, it can be widely used for qi problems of women with a deficiency pattern, and its application to gynecological cancer treatment is considered to be very useful.

Background: No consensus exists regarding which anthropometric measurements are related to bone mineral density (BMD), and this relationship may vary according to sex and age. A large Japanese cohort was analyzed to provide an understanding of the relationship between BMD and anthropometry while adjusting for known confounding factors. Methods: Our cohort included 10,827 participants who underwent multiple medical checkups including distal forearm BMD scans. Participants were stratified into four groups according to age (≥50 years or <50 years) and sex. The BMD values were adjusted for confounding factors, after which single and partial correlation analyses were performed. The prevalence of osteopenia was plotted for each weight index (weight or body mass index [BMI]) class. Results: Cross-sectional studies revealed that weight was more favorably correlated than BMI in the older group (R=0.278 and 0.212 in men and R=0.304 and 0.220 in women, respectively), whereas weight and BMI were weakly correlated in the younger age groups. The prevalence of osteopenia exhibited a negative linear relationship with weight among older women ≥50 years of age, and an accelerated increase was observed with decreasing weight in older men weighing <50 kg and younger women weighing <60 kg. When weight was replaced with BMI, the prevalence was low in most subgroups classified by weight. Conclusions Weight, rather than BMI, was the most important indicator of osteopenia but it might not be predictive of future bone loss.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), is a chronic inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract, with increasing prevalence worldwide. IBD Ahead is an international educational program that aims to explore questions commonly raised by clinicians about various areas of IBD care and to consolidate available published evidence and expert opinion into a consensus for the optimization of IBD management. Given differences in the epidemiology, clinical and genetic characteristics, management, and prognosis of IBD between patients in Japan and the rest of the world, this statement was formulated as the result of literature reviews and discussions among Japanese experts as part of the IBD Ahead program to consolidate statements of factors for disease prognosis in IBD. Evidence levels were assigned to summary statements in the following categories: disease progression in CD and UC; surgery, hospitalization, intestinal failure, and permanent stoma in CD; acute severe UC; colectomy in UC; and colorectal carcinoma and dysplasia in IBD. The goal is that this statement can aid in the optimization of the treatment strategy for Japanese patients with IBD and help identify high-risk patients that require early intervention, to provide a better long-term prognosis in these patients.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Colectomy ; Colitis, Ulcerative ; Colorectal Neoplasms ; Consensus ; Crohn Disease ; Disease Management* ; Disease Progression ; Early Intervention (Education) ; Epidemiology ; Expert Testimony ; Gastrointestinal Tract ; Hospitalization ; Humans ; Inflammatory Bowel Diseases* ; Japan* ; Prevalence ; Prognosis