Bio-attack on Japan! (Kafunsho)

[Mulboyne]

Anti-hay fever chocolates.

[Mock Cockpit]

Does anyone know if you can get Beconase here or something like it i.e containing beclomethasone dipropionate?

[Iraira]

Does anyone know if you can get Beconase here or something like it i.e containing beclomethasone dipropionate?

tried Center Gai in Shibuya?

[Mock Cockpit]

tried Center Gai in Shibuya?

Bit far for me to go I'm afraid. I can get it on-line easily enough but was just wondering if they have something like it here at your usual chemist, Medico 21 and the like. Not to worry, thanks anyway.

[Mulboyne]

Bit far for me to go I'm afraid. I can get it on-line easily enough but was just wondering if they have something like it here at your usual chemist, Medico 21 and the like. Not to worry, thanks anyway.

You can't buy it over the counter at a drug store, you'll need to get a prescription for it but that's pretty easy.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, the most popular anti-hay fever treatment in Japan is the antihistamine allegra.

[DrP]

Zyrtec is also available in Japan - it kicks ass. Though I don't get Cedar allergies (PNW native) I do get grass and Cherry Tree allergy. Allegra has never quite done the trick the way Zyrtec has. Also handy is a nasal steroid spray when you want to stop the symptom dead in its track. You can get those too in Japan. I'm surprised the gernal population buys into all the OTC crap and snake oil. Its all basically worthless.

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: Ministries battle over rice claimed to prevent hay fever

A bureaucratic battle is taking place between two ministries over whether a newly developed genetically modified rice that is claimed to alleviate hay fever should be categorized as a drug or a food, according to sources. On Monday, the health ministry notified the agriculture ministry that it would not recognize the rice as a food product. On Tuesday a cross-sectional government panel studying measures to combat hay fever concurred with the ministry's view. But agriculture ministry officials said: "If the product's descriptions say that the product has efficacy to combat hay fever, it should be treated as a drug. But as long as the effectiveness is cited as a 'special feature' of the product then it should be treated as a food," a ministry official said...more...

Asahi: Rice treatment for hay fever stalls as funding dries up

Efforts to develop a genetically modified rice that could provide a long-lasting solution to the misery of hay fever sufferers have become tangled indefinitely in the bureaucracy of pharmaceutical testing and stymied by funding shortfalls. Between fiscal 2004 and 2007, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries plowed 670 million yen into a project to develop the rice, which contains artificially inserted genes from the proteins thought responsible for allergies caused by Japanese cedar pollen... The farm ministry originally planned to develop the rice as a product considered a food for specified health uses. However, in January 2007, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare deemed the rice a pharmaceutical instead because, as an official with the ministry's Compliance and Narcotics Division explained, "Incorporating the genes of the material causing hay fever into the rice has the objective of treating the disease."

The new classification means that the rice must be clinically tested on humans several times to check for effectiveness and side-effects. Further tests are needed to determine safe levels of ingestion. In short, to receive approval for the drug, the developers will have to cooperate with a pharmaceutical company that has experience and understanding of clinical testing on humans. So far, however, the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences has failed to interest any pharmaceutical company, not only because there is no precedent for seeking approval to use an ordinary food like rice as a drug, but also because the tests would cost billions of yen...more...