Visceral fat accumulation induces insulin resistance, abnormal glucose metabolism, abnormal lipid metabolism and hypertension. Furthermore, even when these individual diseases are present in only a mild form, if more than one of these diseases is present, this may induce development of arteriosclerosis or ischemic cardiovascular diseases.1,2) For these reasons, it is important that some form of medical therapy including exercise and diet therapy be devised to prevent the development of obesity and various metabolic disorders.Bofutsushosan, a traditional Japanese herbal medicine comprising 18 crude drugs (Table 1), has been an effective treatment for obesity, constipation and hypertension. Bofutsushosan was shown to reduce body weight and improve impaired glucose tolerance in a clinical trial.3) In addition, several pharmacological studies have reported on its ability to counter obesity, [4][5][6][7][8] fatty liver, 9,10) and arteriosclerotic diseases.
11)In the present study, we investigated the preventive effects of Bofutsushosan on various disease states (diabetes, hyperlipidemia, hypertension and diabetic peripheral neuropathy) that accompany metabolic disorders, focusing on visceral fat accumulation using a model animal, TSOD (Tsumura, Suzuki, Obese, Diabetes) mice, which are known to develop disease states similar to human metabolic disorders including glucose intolerance, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, hyperinsulinemia and peripheral neuropathy. [12][13][14] MATERIALS AND METHODS
Experimental AnimalsWe used male TSOD mice aged 3 weeks. As a control animal, male TSNO (Tsumura, Suzuki, Non-Obesity) mice 12) aged 3 weeks were used as these animals do not develop obesity and various metabolic disorders. All mice were obtained from the Institute for Animal Reproduction (Ibaragi Prefecture). The animals were housed in an animal room under the following conditions: room temperature of 23Ïź2°C, relative humidity of 55Ïź10% and 12 h of light per day. In the 1-week acclimation period, the animals were given ad libitum powder feed MF (Oriental Yeast Co., Ltd.) and water. Following this period, the powder feed was switched to the study feed containing the test drug, and the animals were kept for further 8 weeks. We certify that all ap- Clinical and Biomedical Sciences, Showa Pharmaceutical University; 3-3165 Higashi-tamagawagakuen, Machida, Tokyo 142-8501, Japan. Received January 23, 2008; accepted May 7, 2008; published online May 8, 2008 Visceral fat accumulation has been reported as the most important risk factor for the development of various metabolic disorders. In this study, the preventive effects of Bofutsushosan, a Japanese Kampo preparation, on obesity and various metabolic disorders were investigated focusing on visceral fat accumulation using Tsumura, Suzuki, Obese, Diabetes (TSOD) mice, which showed significant accumulation of visceral fat, and developed metabolic disorders including glucose intolerance, hyperlipidemia, hypertension and hyperinsulinemia. At 2 months after initiation of the study, the c...