July 21, 2023 – A recent evaluation of dietary supplements claiming to boost athletic performance or help with weight reduction found that almost all didn’t contain the amounts of ingredients claimed on the label and a few contained substances banned by the FDA.
In this latest study published Monday in JAMA network opened12% of the products analyzed contained a substance banned by the FDA and 89% of the supplements analyzed didn’t have accurate ingredient listings. Specifically, the study examined 57 different sports performance supplements, most of which claimed to have stimulant and metabolic advantages.
The 57 different dietary supplements contained no less than one among the next herbal ingredients: Rauwolfia VomitoriaMethylliberin, halostachin, octopamine or turkesterone.
All supplements were purchased online in 2021 and 2022. The claims on the labels ranged from fat burner, thermogenic, pre-workout, metabolism optimization, muscle growth, energy to “anabolic testosterone support.”
The researchers found that 23 of the 57 products didn’t contain a detectable amount of an ingredient listed on the label. For products where the stated ingredients were detectable, the actual amount varied widely from the quantity listed on the label, from 0.02% to 334%. Only 11% of the products examined contained inside 10% of the particular amount listed.
In a editorial In parallel with the study, a health care provider wrote that the absence of the listed ingredients might make the products safer.
“Given that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not pre-approve these products or their advertising claims, this may actually be good news: At least the risk of side effects caused by the ingredients is eliminated,” wrote Peter Lurie, MD, MPH, of the Center for Science in PublicInterest from Washington, DC
Seven products contained no less than one among the next FDA-banned ingredients: octodrine, oxilofrine, deterenol, and 1,4-dimethylamylamine.
“Beyond the risk to your wallet, this study suggests that these products may pose a potential threat to human health,” Lurie wrote. “In fact, this report is just the latest in a series of similar articles by some of the same authors looking at a number of other categories of dietary supplements. All document the extraordinarily poor quality of supplements purchased online, from cognitive enhancers to melatonin to cannabidiol.”
The study authors identified that their research was limited in that their sample size was small and included just one sample of every brand analyzed.
However, the authors warned that “physicians should advise consumers that dietary supplements containing herbal ingredients claiming to have stimulant or anabolic effects may not be accurately labeled and may contain drugs banned by the FDA.”