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Dietary supplements responsible for frequent calls to poison centers
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The rate of dietary supplement exposures doubled from 2000 to 2012, according to research recently published in the Journal of Medical Toxicology.
Researchers said this translates to U.S. Poison Control Centers getting a call approximately every 24 minutes regarding dietary supplement exposures.
“The general public may have a perception that because these supplements are natural, they are safe,” Henry A. Spiller, MS, D.ABAT, FAACT, director of the Central Ohio Poison Center and assistant professor, Ohio State University, told Healio Family Medicine in an interview. “However, in the case of several supplements, such as ephedra, energy supplements (eg, caffeine) and yohimbe, this may not always be true.”
Researchers analyzed 274,998 dietary supplement exposures reported to poison centers from 2000 through 2012. During that time, the rate of dietary supplement exposures per 100,000 people went up 46.1% from 2000 to 2002, went down 8.8% from 2002 to 2005, and then increased again 49.3% from 2005 to 2012. Miscellaneous dietary supplements were responsible for 43.9% of all exposures, then botanicals at 31.9%, hormonal products at 15.1% and other supplements at 5.1%.
Spiller and colleagues also found that dietary supplement categories with the highest proportion of serious medical outcomes were botanicals and energy products, both responsible for 10.8% each, then cultural medicines such as Asian, Hispanic and ayurvedic medicines, at 9.6%. Among products considered botanical, yohimbe accounted for the largest proportion of serious medical outcomes (28.2%), followed by ma huang (16.5%), and multi-botanicals with ma huang (16.3%).
“The majority of these patients/cases had good outcomes,” Spiller said. “However, it is important to note the more than doubling of cases over the study period. Additionally, more than half of these cases occurred in children younger than 6 years. These [over-the-counter] supplements do not have child resistant closures usually provided with [prescription] medications. [Primary medical doctors] should alert their patients to the risks if there are small children in the home.”
Researchers suggested that history makes a convincing argument for the FDA to take a closer look at some of the supplements they studied.
“Our results demonstrate the success of the FDA ban on ma huang products and the need for FDA regulation of yohimbe and energy products in the USA,” they wrote. – by Janel Miller
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.