Japan has abundant hot springs resources that have been empirically used for medical treatment and recreation for people with various diseases or injuries. In 1926, the University of Tokyo inaugurated the Department of Physical Medicine for the scientific study of the effects of hot springs on the human body and mind. Thereafter, balneological research institutes or spa hospitals were established that were affiliated with six national universities; Kyushu, Hokkaido, Okayama, Tohoku, Kagoshima and Gunma had been established by 1951. Although these balneological institutes, including the University of Tokyo, greatly advanced the basic and clinical research on the therapeutic effects of hot springs, they all were either closed or integrated into the main hospital of the university between 1994 and 2018, owing both to government reforms to national universities and decreased government financial support. A brief history of each institute and several titles of published research studies performed there are provided in this article.   The closing of these research institutes is regrettable; however, balneological research is today an important field that contributes to maintenance and promotion of health for the sharply rising number of aged people in Japan. It is expected that a member of the Japanese Society of Balneology, Climatology and Physical Medicine will further develop balneological research using advanced scientific technologies, based on the results achieved in the seven historical institutes mentioned above.

  The Japanese Society of Balneology, Climatology and Physical Medicine (JSBCPM) was founded in 1935 with the aim of researching the scientific bases of balneotherapy. The Society was admitted as the 15th affiliated member of the Japanese Association of Medical Sciences, which consists of 123 medical societies today. The scientific meeting of the Society has been held annually and the 80th anniversary meeting was celebrated in 2015.   The number of members has gradually increased over the past 30 years due to rising interest in balneotherapy. The members counted 1914, including 976 balneotherapists who had completed a training course for balneotherapy of which 221 were Society-certified balneotherapy specialists in 2015. The Society has held a training course for balneotherapy and study meetings in 7 areas of Japan once a year to promote balneology. The official journal (J. Jpn. Soc. Balneol. Climatol. Phys. Med.) has been issued quarterly and several textbooks relating to spa treatment have been published by the committee of the Society.   In the annual scientific meeting, several special lectures and an average of 50 free papers have been presented. The main concerns of the members, assumed from the percentage of titles of papers appearing in J. Jpn. Soc. Balneol. Climatol. Phys. Med., had been spa bathing treatment followed by climatology and the chemistry of hot springs water up until volume 50; however, they have recently shifted to the physiology of heat stimuli, health promotion with spa bathing and mox and acupuncture instead of climatology and chemistry.   The Society reported “the indications and contra-indications of spa treatment” in 2010 after 5 years’ research into medical references on balneology by request of the Ministry of the Environment. Based on this report the official notification for indications and contra-indications of balneotherapy was changed in 2014 by the Chief of Natural Environment in the Ministry of the Environment. The organization of balneotherapists has performed several studies on the effect of balneotherapy and reported the results of them in J. Jpn. Soc. Balneol. Climatol. Phys. Med., volumes 65 and 74.   The 39th Congress of the International Society of Medical Hydrology and Climatology (ISMH) was successfully held in Kyoto under the sponsorship of JSBCPM in 2014.

Objective: In The Hospital of Hyogo College of Medicine, a oral rinse containing polaprezinc (PZ), a zinc-containing drug for gastric ulcers, was used as a hospital preparation to treat radiotherapy-related oral mucositis, and its efficacy was reported.  However, the dispersibility of PZ for carboxymethylcellulose sodium (CMC), which was used as the base of the oral rinse, was unfavorable, raising an issue.  In this study, we newly prepared a PZ oral rinse containing carboxyvinyl polymer (CP) as a base, and examined its usefulness.
Methods: A questionnaire survey regarding the usefulness involving 10 healthy volunteers and a pharmaceutical test were conducted.
Results: The results of the questionnaire survey showed that the optimal concentration of CP was 0.5%.  There were no serial changes in the pH, adhesiveness, or PZ content for 7 days after preparation.  Furthermore, there were no differences between CMC and CP.  The dispersibility of PZ in the oral rinse containing CP as a base was more favorable than that in the oral rinse containing CMC.
Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the PZ oral rinse containing 0.5% CP as a base is useful, and that its stability is similar to that of the oral rinse containing CMC as a base.

Objective: Oral mucositis is one of the serious and frequent acute side effects due to chemoradiotherapy (CRT) for head and neck cancer.  In this study, we prepared an oral rinse as a hospital preparation for the treatment of oral mucositis, which was a suspension of polaprezinc (PZ), a zinc-containing therapeutic agent for gastric ulcer, in carboxyvinyl polymer (CP), a water-soluble large molecule.
Methods: We carried out stability tests of the PZ-CP oral rinse, and investigated its effects on the radiation-induced oral mucositis in patients who received CRT for head and neck cancer.
Results: In the stability test, the pH, viscosity, adhesion and PZ content in the preparations did not change throughout 28 days after preparation.  In the clinical evaluation on the basis of the distribution of the Grade of oral mucositis, the Grade of oral mucositis in the PZ group was significantly lower than in the control group at 6 and 7 weeks (p=0.016, p=0.018).  The incidence of severe oral mucositis of Grade 3 was 15.0% (3 cases) in the PZ group and 41.7% (10 cases) in the control group at 6 weeks, and was 15.0% (3 cases) in the PZ group and 33.3% (8 cases) in the control group at 7 weeks.
Conclusion: These results suggest that PZ-CP oral rinse inhibits the aggravation of oral mucositis induced by CRT or promotes its healing.

Background: Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) strains with positive cagA gene can induce an advanced severe condition of atrophic gastritis and a higher risk of gastric carcinoma than those without cagA gene. Objective: To carry out the full sequence of cagA gene and preliminary analysis, classify cagA protein in H. pylori strains in Vietnamese patients. Subjects and method: 5 patients with H. pylori strains from Ho Chi Minh city were enrolled in the study. H. pylori was cultured and determined by PCR before sequencing full cagA gene. Analyzing cagA gene and constructing phylogenetic tree using biometrics and bioinformatics software. Results: The length of open reading frame of cagA gene of H. pylori strains in Vietnamese patients was 3480-3588 base-pairs, the number of amino acid in relavant cagA protein was 1159-1195 amino acids and all cagA protein molecules belonged to East Asian cagA, none of them was Western cagA. Even with the same classification of East Asian cagA, the Japanese H. pylori strains and Vietnamese strains were located in different cluster in phylogenetic tree. Conclusion: The study suggested that H. pylori cagA proteins in patients from Ho Chi Minh city belonged to East Asian cagA.
Helicabacter pylori ; H. pylori ; cagA