Dietary supplements are regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, as amended by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). Sales of botanical dietary supplements accounted for more than 5 billion dollars in 2010 and their popularity keeps on increasing due to the public perception that they are natural, safe and effective.  In the past few years, many incidences of adverse effects due to consumption of dietary supplements were reported and on numerous occasions the adverse events were the results of adulterated dietary supplements. The most common form of adulteration in botanical dietary supplements is by addition of pharmaceutical or biologically active compounds. The other most common adulteration is the substitution of the botanical component with a related or unrelated plant species. In the first part of the presentation, we will discuss our approaches to detect adulteration with phenylethylamine-type compounds in weight loss and body building supplements. In the second part, the challenges in the detection of adulteration of a popular libido enhancing product with botanically unrelated plants will be discussed. The need for investigations using multiple analytical techniques such as LC-MS, GC-MS, and HPTLC along with pharmacognostic and DNA barcoding methods is indispensable in dealing with these complex issues. Finally, the application of a high resolution mass spectroscopy based screening method for targeted analysis of multiple pharmaceuticals, phytotoxins and other secondary metabolites in herbal dietary supplements will be discussed.

Adulteration in botanical dietary supplements: Problems and approaches for their detection

248th National Meeting (2014)

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