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From 2007 to 2016, the Food and Drug Administration logged 776 dietary supplements as being adulterated with pharmaceuticals. Less than half of those products were recalled. That’s according to a study published today (October 12) in JAMA Network Open by researchers at the California Department of Public Health.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates supplements differently from drugs—which have to be tested for safety and effectiveness before they go to market—but more like they do for food. That means that the FDA will find cases of adulterated supplements only after they are on the market. When the agency identifies spiked products, it logs them in a public database, which the researchers mined for this study.
The supplements most often adulterated were those marketed for sexual enhancement, weight loss, or muscle building, the study reports.
Such unlabeled and unauthorized inclusion of medicines can be dangerous. For ...
