Botanical dietary supplements

United States Food and Drug Administration. Adverse Events with Ephedra and Other Botanical Dietary Supplements. FDA Medical Bulletin. Accessed at http //vm.cfsan.fda.gov/ dms/ds-ephe2.html. 

UTILIZATION OF BOTANICAL DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES... 

In 1997, Landmark Healthcare Inc. commissioned a report entitled The Landmark Report on Public Perceptions of Alternative Care. They conducted 1500 telephone interviews in November 1997, using random digit selection. The survey included a representative sample of minority patients—85%o Caucasian, 8%o African-Americans, and 3% Hispanic. The survey found that 17%o of the U.S. population used botanical dietary supplements in the past year and even more striking, 75 /o of the U.S. population was most likely to use botanical products. Eighty-five percent of those reported to have taken a botanical supplement self-prescribed and self-administered the products. Three-fourths of patients who used alternative forms of care did so in conjunction with conventional medicine, yet 15% of patients replaced their conventional treatment with alternative care (16). 

Program for Collaborative Research in the Pharmaceutical Sciences, WHO Collaborating Center for Traditional Medicine and UlC/NIH Center for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 

Slifman NR, Obermeyer WR, Aloi BK, et al. Contamination of botanical dietary supplements by Digitalis lanata. N Engl J Med 1998 339 806-811. 

Mahady GB, Fong HHS, Farnsworth NR. Botanical Dietary Supplements Quality, Safety and Efficacy. Lisse, Netherlands Swets Zeitlinger, 2001. 

Allergy prevalence has increased over the past few decades,1 and there is accumulating evidence that botanicals may be useful for the associated symptoms.2 4 In order to commercialize a botanical dietary supplement to support clear nasal passages, we used an approach combining biological and clinical techniques. Botanical... 

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