Megmilk Snow Brand Co., Ltd.

Toshimitsu Yoshioka

Hiroshi Ueno

Ken Kato

Noriko Ueda

Susumu Miura

Yuko Haruta

Leo Tanaka

Hiroshi Kawakami

Hiroaki Matsuyama

Akira Tomizawa

Satoshi Higurashi

Tomoyuki Isogai

Masayuki Watanabe

Yasuyuki Seto

Mari Miura

Reo Tanaka

Tatsuya Watanabe

Taku Nakano

Kenji Kojima

Naoki Azuma

It is intended to find novel pharmaceutical use of sphingomyelin and to provide preventive or therapeutic agents for various diseases as well as a food and drink product and feed comprising any of these agents. The present invention provides a pharmaceutical agent which contains sphingomyelin as an active ingredient and is any of the following agents: 1) a sialomucin secretion promoter, 2) an agent for preventing drunken sickness (hangover), 3) an antiallergic agent, 4) an antioxidant, 5) an agent for defending against infection, 6) a hair growth agent, 7) a therapeutic agent for demyelinating disease, 8) an anti-pigmentation agent, 9) an anti-inflammatory agent, and 10) an agent for improving learning ability. The present invention also provides a food and drink product or feed, characterized by comprising the agent. It is preferred that the sphingomyelin should be derived from milk.

Medicine, food and drink or feed containing sphingomyelin

A skin-whitening agent offering an excellent whitening effect and being effective in preventing and treating age spots, freckles, etc., where such skin-whitening agent contains as its effective ingredient a whey protein hydrolyzate characterized by a molecular weight distribution of 10 kDa or less, main peak of 200 Da to 3 kDa, APL (average peptide-chain length) of 2 to 8, free amino acid content of 20% or less, and antigenicity of one-ten thousandth of &#x3b2;-lactoglobulin or less, as well as a cosmetic, drink or food, feed, pharmaceutical preparation or other skin-whitening product containing such skin-whitening agent.

Skin-whitening agent

A skin beautifier contains sphingomyelin, which is a phospholipid, as an effective ingredient. In addition, skin-beautifying food or feed contains sphingomyelin as an effective ingredient. The present invention provides a skin beautifier and skin-beautifying food or feed supplying effects on beauty, such as skin-moisturizing and protecting effects, skin-roughness-preventing and improving effects, and a wrinkle-preventing effect, by oral ingestion thereof.

Skin beautifier

A dead cell of a lactic acid bacterium or a culture containing the dead cell of a lactic acid bacterium is added to the dairy products such as yogurt, cheese, milk beverage or the like in an amount of 0.001 wt % or more in dry weight of the dead cell, therefore, it is possible to enhance the growth of a lactic acid bacterium, to shorten the time required for fermentation, and to improve the viability of a lactic acid bacterium during storage over a long period, without affecting the flavor or production cost of the dairy product.

Enhancer of proliferation of lactic acid bacterium, and agent for improvement in survivability of lactic acid bacterium

Growing community of inventors

Kawagoe, Japan

Toshimitsu Yoshioka