Obesity is one of the most common metabolic diseases,and obesity-associated disorders have reached epidemic proportions.Abdominal obesity in particular has been linked with elevations in total cholesterol (TC),low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C),and triacylglycerol (TG),as well as with decreased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C),and is also associated with elevated blood pressure.It has been noted that excessive fat tissue in and around the abdomen leads to the very common disorder of metabolic syndrome but effective prophylactic agents and methods for treating it have not yet been discovered.Amid these circumstances,Bofutsushosan (BF),a Kampo (Chinese herbal medicine) remedy,has been studied as an antiobesity drug for the treatment of metabolic disorders.Specialists in Kampo medicine have prescribed BF for"HimanShou"(obesity with large waist and potbelly) through Kampo diagnosis based on"Shou"(constitution),which cannot be said to be the same condition as the obesity that is prevalent worldwide since it is diagnosed by the procedures of western medicine.Thus in order for BF to be accepted as an anti obesity treatment in modern medicine,much data must be collected on the mechanism by which it reduces fat as well as its safety.There also need to be ethical guidelines for its use for this purpose.With this in mind,we first conducted basic experiments on obese mice and then double-blind,randomized controlled trials on outpatients in an obesity clinic.The aim of this study was to test the effectiveness of Bofutsushosan in clinical practice,in particular for obesity with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) which is reported to increase the risk of cardiovascular events,using western medical procedures and scientific evaluation methods.