Certification of vitamins seen as way to fill regulatory void

Research findings are reinforcing dietary supplements' medical credentials, but their regulation lags behind.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Nov. 5, 2001.

Washington -- As the sale of vitamins and other dietary supplements continues to increase, the safety and efficacy of these products remain a concern of physicians, their patients, researchers, regulators and supplement manufacturers alike.

Since 1994, sales of dietary supplements increased by nearly 80%, from $8.8 billion to an estimated $15.7 billion for 2000, according to an article published in the March 26 Archives of Internal Medicine.

Sales of specific herbal remedies such as echinacea, ginseng, ginkgo biloba and St. John's wort exceeded $200 million per product per year, said the article.

Meanwhile, as the Food and Drug Administration continues its several-year struggle to bring out regulations regarding the production of supplements, claims of some alleged attributes are being put to the test in well-designed federally funded clinical studies.

And those studies are finding evidence that some products do indeed constitute effective medical treatments.

For example, a study published in the October Archives of Ophthalmology concluded that high levels of antioxidant vitamins and zinc reduce the risk of vision loss from age-related macular degeneration.

The Age-Related Eye Disease Study, supported in part by the National Eye Institute and the National Institutes of Health, found that people at high risk for developing advanced stages of age-related macular degeneration lowered their risk by about 25% when treated with high-doses of vitamins C and E, beta-carotene and zinc. [...]

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