At least 23,000 emergency room visits in the United States each year can be traced to dietary supplements, according to the first major study of adverse outcomes from products often marketed as healthy and natural.
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Supplements do not have to have federal Food and Drug Administration approval before they are sold, nor do they get the kind of testing prescription drugs do.
The complications include heart problems such as irregular or rapid heartbeat or chest pain, says Dr. Andrew Geller of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who led the study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Among the injuries cited were severe allergic reactions, heart trouble, nausea and vomiting, which were tied to a variety of supplements, including herbal pills, amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Even among those with heart-related symptoms, 90 percent were sent home from the ER, the findings showed. “With the youthful adults one among our central findings was weight reduction or power merchandise have been essentially the most generally implicated dietary dietary supplements and the actual fact is discovered many with cardiac signs – that are results we would see with caffeine”, Geller mentioned.
Duffy Mackay, a spokesman for the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a supplement-industry trade group, said that if anything, the new research highlighted how relatively safe supplements are given how many people took them.
Unlike companies that make prescription or over-the-counter drugs, those that manufacture supplements aren’t required to list possible side effects on their products, the study said.
Cohen was referring to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, a 1994 law that defined supplements as food rather than drugs. Misusing these supplements, particularly those that promise energy enhancement and weight loss or muscle building is a serious health problem among younger adults and teenagers alike.
While that number is a small fraction – just 5 percent – of the number of ER visits involving pharmaceuticals, the issue is a cause for concern because the market for herbal and complementary nutritional products remains largely unregulated.
“Consumers should report to their doctors that they are taking dietary supplements, and which ones”, said Geller. Yet, iron supplements – which can be fatal to children in large doses – were still the second-most common cause of an ER trip for children, in spite of the resistant packaging, Geller said. The study found that about a third of supplement-related emergency-room visits for people 65 and older were caused by choking on pills such as calcium and other vitamins. Also, young adults have been advised not to take such supplements in excess of quantity.
“For all those reasons it can be hard for consumers, clinicians and public health agencies to determine which, if any, of the specific active ingredients caused the observed effects”, Geller says.
The FDA does have the power to force manufacturers to recall risky products.
More than a quarter of the ER visits documented in the study involved young adults between the age of 20 and 34 years. Fabricant said the FDA has all the authority it needs to ensure supplements are safe.
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In-Depth [cross-sectional]: An average of 23,005 (95% [CI], 18,611-27,398) ED visits for adverse events were associated with dietary supplements annually.
