The use of Weight loss, muscle building or sexual enhancement pills are very common but be careful while using them as most of the pills listed in Public database mostly available in India found adulterated with unapproved and even banned pharmaceutical ingredients in the US with potential to cause serious health risks.
Reports are posted in JAMA Network Open. According to the researchers, who researched, extracted and analysed US Food and Drug Administration’s (US FDA) Center data from the Drug Evaluation and Research “In the US, around 776 types of dietary supplements sold over a period of 10 years from 2007 to 2016 found not good and unapproved as they contain banned ingredients such as sildenafil, sibutramine, and synthetic steroids — which have potential to cause side-effects ranging from stroke to kidney failure and even death.”
These ingredients are mainly used in the products, commonly marketed and used for sexual enhancement, weight loss, or muscle building.
In India, there is a strong lack of regulation and guidelines and these products can easily be marketed and doctors are concerned as the issue can be bigger here. US regulator also said that they able to test a portion of products and many more products are still not tested yet.
A fully regulated country the US too not fully tested these products yet. In India, where not much relevant segment to test, guidelines and regulations, the market of these products is very high. Dietary supplements in India are not tested or sampled by any authority and are easily available. Dr. Anoop Misra, chairman, Fortis C-Doc also shared that the consumption is growing rapidly for supplements usage in India.
Market analysts suspected the market of the dietary supplement segment includes nutraceuticals, foods for special dietary use and foods for special medical purpose poised to become a $10 billion industry by 2025.
With the increase in Income and to make a change in the lifestyle, the demand of these products increases and freedom from strict regulation and usage guidelines have made these products easily available over the counter and through online sales.
FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) noticed the increase in the demands of supplements and working to strengthen the packaging norms for such products.
Dr. Mishra also shared his concerned that absence of regulations and product sampling and testing, quality, efficacy, and safety of such dietary supplements continue to be under question.
Another problem in India is that this issue is overlapping between DCGI and FSSAI. DCGI(Drugs Controller General of India) regulating medicines and food supplements come under the purview of FSSAI.
Pharma manufacturing companies taking benefit of this and to get relief from drug price regulation or stringent pharmaceutical norms, companies tweak their pharma formulations and launch their products as food supplements, bypassing regulatory approvals from the DCGI.
US FDA researchers proved that more than 20% of adulterated dietary supplements contained more than one unapproved pharmaceutical ingredients.
