Kampo in the treatment of dementia

Hiroyuki Arai

Center for Asian Traditional Medicine, Department of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi

For thousands of years, herbal medicines have been used with apparent safety and efficacy in Asia in the treatment of dementia. Yi-Gan San (YGS) had been developed in 1555 by Xue Kai/China as a remedy for restlessness and agitation in pediatrics. Such restlessness, agitation and possibly BPSD may occur as a result of an impaired balance between excitatory and inhibitory neural network. YGS may enhance inhibitory neural transmission (Iwasaki et al., 2005). We conducted 4-week observer-blind randomized controlled trial of YGS in the treatment of BPSD. After 4-week treatment neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI) score significantly decreased in the treated group compared to control group which received no medication. In particular, hallucination, delusion, excitation and nocturnal wandering improved. Notably, physical activity as assessed by Barthel index did not change or deteriorate.

Address correspondence to Dr. Hiroyuki Arai, Center for Asian Traditional Medicine, Department of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Tohoku University School of Medicine (1-1, Seiryo-cho, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8574, Japan)