Dietary supplements and health: the research agenda

Research needs to evaluate the role of dietary supplements in human health abound, yet funds to support all of the possible opportunities do not. Government agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the USA, remain the chief sponsors of research in this area. They face the challenge of competing priorities, such as critical disease-oriented research, basic biomedical and technological development, and prevention-related research. Dietary supplements are widely used for health promotion and disease prevention, sometimes with minimal science to support their use. There is a need for focused research efforts to better address issues of efficacy, safety and quality of dietary supplements. At the same time, fundamental studies of their mechanisms of action are needed. In addition, resources to support research in this area are required: on the one hand, basic tools (analytical methods, characterization of ingredients) need to be developed and validated, and on the other, tools to understand patterns of supplement use in populations and study designs to assess their efficacy and safety need refining. These efforts benefit greatly from partnerships among government agencies and with the academic and private sectors.