Kobayashi Pharmaceutical's Health Products Linked to Illnesses, Losses Exceed 10.1 Billion Yen!

On November 8, 2024, Japanese media released a remarkable news, Japan's famous Kobayashi Pharmaceutical company announced that due to its health care products containing monaskoji ingredients caused damage to consumer health, the company decided to recall related products and assume the corresponding liability for compensation. This series of measures resulted in losses of 10.1 billion yen, equivalent to about 475 million yuan. At the same time, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical announced the consolidated financial results for the first three quarters of the 2024 fiscal year (that is, from January to September), showing that the company's net profit fell 65.5% year-on-year to 5.3 billion yen, and sales also fell 3.9% to 114.4 billion yen.

At the end of March this year, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical for the first time publicly disclosed that its health care products containing monaskoji ingredients may cause harm to consumers. According to the company's latest data on September 15, the number of consumers who have sought medical treatment after taking the supplement has reached 2,450. In the investigation, there were as many as 120 cases involving deaths. A man from Osaka Prefecture, Japan, filed a lawsuit with the Osaka District Court for kidney damage caused by taking the product, asking Kobayashi Pharmaceutical to pay about 4.95 million yen, or about 243,000 yuan.

On September 19, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare confirmed through a series of experiments that puberulinic acid detected in the raw materials of health care products containing monascus ingredients of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical was the main cause of kidney dysfunction in consumers. The other two substances, which were not initially anticipated, were shown not to be nephrotoxic. In its report, Xinhua cited several Japanese media reports that in animal experiments conducted by the National Research Institute of Japan, rats that ingested only puberulinic acid developed kidney dysfunction, while the other two substances did not cause kidney damage in rats. The ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare speculated that the plant producing monascus raw materials may have mixed penicillium in the process of cultivation of monascus, resulting in the production of puberulinic acid. As for the other two substances, it may be that the active ingredient of monacolin K containing monascus health products has changed under the action of penicillium.