A federal study funded by the Department of Health and Human Services has found that 23,000 people end up in the emergency room every year because of side effects associated with the intake of dietary supplements, challenging the idea that dietary supplements, such as herbal products, are safe, according to Health Day.
Although some dietary supplements have been recalled because they contained harmful ingredients, there has not been enough research on how other supplements affect health, as pointed out by lead study author Andrew Geller at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The research team gathered data from 63 emergency departments and found that from 2004 to 2013, 3,700 ER cases were attributed to adverse effects from dietary supplements. Adults between ages 20 and 34 comprised 28 percent of the patients.
An estimated 3,339 women are brought to the ER annually because of weight loss supplements. On the other hand, sexual enhancement supplements and body building supplements affect many men, with the former sending 567 men to the ER and the latter sending 368 men to the ER each year.
Adults were rushed to the ER mostly because of chest pain and palpitations. The study found that weight loss and energy supplements, which typically contained ginseng, caffeine, guarana and linoleic acid, were responsible for 72 percent of cardiac problems related to dietary supplements.
Most of the ER patients were sent home after treatment without the need for hospital confinement, although an estimated 2,100 patients are hospitalized every year. And that could be an underestimate, according to Geller.
"What's most concerning is the age of people coming in with cardiovascular complications or symptoms," Curtis Haas, director of pharmacy for the University of Rochester Medical Center who was not involved in the study, told Reuters. "They are in their 20s to 30s, which shows there are risks to these products."
"The number of emergency department visits attributed to supplement-related adverse events that we identified is probably an underestimation, since supplement use is underreported by patients, and physicians may not identify adverse events associated with supplements as often as they do those associated with pharmaceuticals," the researchers wrote.
The study was published in the Oct. 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
