Health

Diet Supplements Get Gonged

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

May 28, 1999 / 7:06 PM EDT / CBS

In the unregulated world of dietary supplements, it's becoming more and more difficult for consumers to separate fact from fiction. The latest case in point: the garlic supplement Kwai, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin.

German researchers spent four years studying Kwai and say in patients who took it they were able to measure a reduction in the plaque that clogs arteries and leads to heart disease. Some American doctors were impressed. "This is the first long-term trial of the active ingredient in garlic and we're very hopeful. It's reputable research that's been published in a solid journal showing a significant clinical effect for a very serious illness," says Dr. James Dillard of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.

But even an apparently reliable study is coming under fire, pointing to the need for urgent regulation in the dietary supplement industry, which is raking in $4 billion a year. "This research would never get published in the New England Journal of Medicine," says Dr. Jerome Kassirer, the journal's editor-in-chief.

Kassirer notes that:

Of 280 people in the Kwai study, only 152 completed it. A dropout rate too high, he says, to yield significant results.
The people in the control group were sicker than those taking the garlic, making the garlic look more effective.
It didn't work nearly as well in men as it did in women.

Kassirer says there is equally meager evidence backing up the claims of other hot sellers like saw palmetto, St. John's wort and ginkgo biloba. "The evidence that your mind can be cleared, or that your energy will be improved, or that your wisdom will be stimulated by these materials is false hope," he says.

Until claims by supplement manufacturers can be verified by rigorous research, doctors say the best prescription remains: buyer beware.