Clinical significance of post-market surveillance for dietary supplements: A possible framework for enhanced patient safety

5^th International Meeting on Complementary and Alternative Medicine & Therapies

September 18-19, 2017 Charlotte, USA

Kristy Appelhans

Herbalife Nutrition, USA

Keynote: Curr Res Integr Med

Abstract :

Use of dietary supplements is very common amongst providers working in integrative, complementary, and/or alternative health care settings and the retail sale of a broad array of dietary supplements has allowed these substances to be easily accessed by the consumer population. In fact, recent studies have stated that at least 70% of US consumers incorporate some form of dietary supplement use into their routine nutrition/health regimen. Therefore, it is critical to consistently and objectively review the safety of these supplements in order to properly evaluate their use in patient wellness protocols. Unfortunately, pre-market safety data is sporadic at best beyond traditional use knowledge for individual novel ingredients (i.e. not including those recognized as food ingredients with well-established safety records from long-standing use in the food supply) and combined substance use data (e.g. multi-ingredient formulations) is even less commonly established. While the body of pre-market safety evidence is growing significantly for novel supplement ingredients and combinations, post-market surveillance remains an important tool for evaluating the use of these substances in the population at large, which often cannot be properly demonstrated in controlled clinical study populations. This review will present various methods for evaluating dietary supplement safety in the post-market environment and identify potential ways in which clinicians may use this information and assist with the broader assessment of populations using these substances in the interest of patient safety.

Biography :

Kristy Appelhans has completed her Bachelor of Science in Clinical Nutrition in 2003, Doctoral degree in Naturopathic Medicine in 2007, and Masters of Science in Regulatory Affairs in 2016. She oversees Herbalife Nutrition’s Global Post-Market Safety Surveillance department and operates a private naturopathic medical practice. She has a broad scope of expertise related to the technical, functional, and clinical aspects of consumer safety. She has been the lead author for more than 14 peer-reviewed articles, co-authored a global industry guidance document for the collection of adverse events, and recently co-authored a book chapter on the technical and functional aspects of adverse event collection and reporting.