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An estimated 29,000 dietary supplements are available in
the United States. These supplements include all ingested
health products (botanical, nonbotanical, herbal or traditional
cultural remedies in pill or other forms) and are usually
intended for maintaining health, rather than treating existing
conditions (as most pharmaceutical drugs do).
Many of these
supplements may produce adverse events: unwanted side-effects
that cause injury or illness. Dietary supplements do not have
to endure the same mandatory registration or safety testing
as prescription drugs, and adverse events related to them
are difficult to monitor.
In a study in The Lancet, 11 poison control centers
recorded details about approximately 1,500 telephone calls
related to dietary supplements (or over 60% of all calls),
nearly 800 of which involved symptoms. Through a review process,
approximately 500 of these reports were analyzed based on
evidence that the adverse events  were
related to dietary supplements. People taking supplements
named reasons including disease treatment (over one-quarter
of callers); anxiety prevention; cognitive or athletic performance
enhancement; sleep or stress aid; or boosting of the immune
system.
One-third of adverse events from supplement use were considered
moderately severe or worse, including symptoms such as heart
attack, seizures, coma, liver failure and death. Ingredients
most frequently associated with adverse events were the botanicals
ma huang, ginseng, guarana and St. John's wort, and the substances
zinc, melatonin and chromium. The more ingredients being taken,
the more severe the symptoms, and about half of calls were
related to more than one ingredient taken. Most of the supplements
did not appear in the database used by the poison control
centers.
This study raises a few points. Most importantly, be careful
when considering any supplement not regulated by the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA), and take it only after talking
to your doctor and researching it on your own. Don't take
multiple supplements together or with medications, or negative
reactions may occur. Also, as this study showed, the longer
you take a supplement, the more concentrated it may become,
and the more likely it will be to cause an adverse reaction.
Reference:
Palmer ME, Haller C, et al. Adverse events associated with
dietary supplements: An observational study. The Lancet
2003:361, pp. 101-106.
To browse more studies on consumer safety, check out https://www.chiroweb.com/find/archives/general/consumer/index.html.
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