JAMA, Time Articles Give Embattled Supplements Industry Needed Boost

CHICAGO—Following the supplements industry’s thrashing in October in both the New England Journal of Medicine and the mainstream press, the industry in November enjoyed a spate of positive publicity that could even give the industry’s sagging stocks a boost, observers say.

“This may be a good shot in the arm for them from an economic standpoint,” says John Cardellina, director of Botanical Science and Regulatory Affairs at the Washington, DC-based Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN).

Both the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and Time magazine covered the supplements industry in some depth and portrayed it in a less negative light than only months ago did the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the New England medical journal.

In a first for JAMA, its entire Nov. 11 issue was devoted to alternative medicine. The journal published results of seven research studies on alternative treatments and therapies.

The studies refuted claims that chiropractic manipulation helps tension headaches, that Garcinia cambogia helps weight loss, and that acupuncture can control pain from nerve damage caused by HIV.

But studies supported claims that Chinese herbs help irritable bowel syndrome; that saw palmetto helps bladder symptoms caused by prostate enlargement; that yoga helps wrist problems caused by carpal tunnel syndrome; and that an acupuncture-like treatment involving herbs encourages fetuses in the breech position to turn in the womb.

JAMA also published survey results from David Eisenberg, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University and director of the Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, that show 83 million, or four out of 10, Americans used some form of alternative medicine in 1997. That’s an increase of 22 million compared with the number of users from Eisenberg’s 1990 study on alternative medicine use. The most frequent users were between the ages of 35 and 49 and had annual incomes of more than $50,000 a year.

Visits in the U.S. to alternative medicine practitioners increased from an estimated 427 million in 1990 to 629 million in 1997, according to the survey. By comparison, visits to all U.S. primary-care physicians in 1997 totaled 386 million, the survey reveals.

Indeed, total out-of-pocket expenditures for alternative therapies have grown from about $13.7 billion in 1993 to $27 billion in 1997, the survey found.

Time, on Nov. 23, followed JAMA’s lead with a feature in its business section on the supplements industry that referenced the JAMA findings and quoted investment advice from Wall Street analysts. Twinlab (TWLB), Rexall Sundown (RXSD), Natrol (NTOL), General Nutrition Cos. (GNCI), and NBTY (NBTY) were cited as stocks on which the Street was most bullish.

CRN’s Cardellina says the positive press is welcome, but that there is a downside to it, too.

“The danger is in becoming complacent,” he says, noting that a call for more research on safety and efficacy was evident in all the recent industry-positive press. “Let’s do the science to back up these products,” he adds.