The Dietary Supplement Label Database: Updates and Research Uses
|
|
The Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD) has been redesigned with an emphasis on ease-of-use and to reflect new supplement labeling regulations. Here’s what’s new and different with the DSLD:
- Homepage improvements: Users can search the entire website from the homepage.
- Smart technology: The DSLD recognizes and adjusts for differences in user spelling and punctuation for searches of labels, ingredients, or manufacturers.
- Calculators: A variety of calculators allow users to select different dosage amounts, units of measure, or dietary requirements.
- Better downloads: Data are available for download as CSV files and can be opened in a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel or by most standard statistical packages.
- Mobile-friendly: In addition to computers, the DSLD can be used on many devices—from tablets to smartphones.
- Accessible analytics: DSLD data tables have been updated to allow for improved data manipulation, filtering, and downloading. Additionally, popular searches have been highlighted on the homepage.
The DSLD is a congressionally mandated database of information extracted from the labels of dietary supplement products. It features searchable data fields and the images of more than 86,000 labels from products currently or formerly sold in the United States. These products are made by more than 5,000 manufacturers. The DSLD is a research tool and resource that was developed in 2008 as a collaborative project between the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) and the National Library of Medicine with other federal government partners. An average of 1,000 labels have been added every month to cover the dietary supplement marketplace and keep up with changes in the marketplace so that up-to-date information is available for supplements on the market.
Scientists and medical librarians use the DSLD to research dietary supplement label information, identify population-specific dietary supplement products, and study dietary supplement label safety claims. Consumers search the DSLD for products for their own purposes. More than 100 articles in the biomedical literature reference the DSLD and its uses. Research questions have included:
- Which vitamins and minerals are present in different multivitamin/mineral supplements?
- What supplements are available for children under 4 years of age?
- What do specific prenatal supplements contain?
- What claims are made on dietary supplement labels?
|
|
Recent publications featuring DSLD-based research include:
- Saldanha LG, Dwyer JT, Bailen RA, Andrews KW, Betz JM, Chang HF, Costello RB, Ershow AG, Goshorn J, Hardy CJ, Coates PM. Characteristics and challenges of dietary supplement databases derived from label information
 . J Nutr 2018;148(2):1422S-27S.
|
|
The DSLD team at ODS—Richard A. Bailen, M.B.A., M.H.A., Johanna T. Dwyer, Sc.D., R.D., and Leila Saldanha, Ph.D., R.D.—credit the success of the DSLD to ODS’s decade-long collaborations with its federal partners and vendors (ABT Associates and Therapeutic Research Center). ODS’s federal partners include:
- National Library of Medicine collaborators, led by Florence Chang, M.L.A. and Jeanne Goshorn, M.S., host and maintain the DSLD and monitor its use. Current DSLD usage data indicate that there are more than 30,000 users per quarter.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics which supplies the labels of all the dietary supplements that participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey report taking.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service performs chemical analyses of the most popular supplements to check the accuracy of the labels.
- U.S. Department of Defense's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences keeps track of the dietary supplements used by U.S. warfighters and advise them on safe use of these products.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition oversees and regulates dietary supplements as well as most foods.
- Department of Commerce's National Institute of Science and Technology provides standard reference materials for analyses of dietary supplements.
Further information about the DSLD is available in a recently published supplement to The Journal of Nutrition and on the DSLD website. A webinar on how to search the DSLD is available on YouTube (see below).
|
|
Webinar: How To Search the Dietary Supplement Label Database
In September 2018, medical librarian Margot Malachowski, M.L.S., A.H.I.P., presented a webinar on how to search the DSLD. Ms. Malachowski is the education and outreach coordinator for the New England region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine located at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She shared why she made the webinar: “I surveyed the hospital librarians in New England to find out what National Library of Medicine databases they’d like to learn more about. The overwhelming favorite was the Dietary Supplement Label Database.”
|
|
Photo from the November 15, 2017, Office of the Director Honor Award Ceremony presentation to the Dietary Supplement Label Database Project Team “for the development and launch of the re-designed, mobile-friendly version of the Dietary Supplement Label Database.” Pictured from left to right: James M. Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., Deputy Director for Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives, NIH; Silvia I. Salazar, M.P.A., Informatics Research Lab Manager, National Cancer Institute; Leila Saldanha, Ph.D., R.D., ODS Scientific Consultant; Richard A. Bailen, M.B.A., M.H.A., ODS Senior Program Analyst; Nancy Potischman, Ph.D., ODS Populations Studies Program Director; Johanna T. Dwyer, Sc.D., R.D., ODS Senior Nutrition Scientist; and Lawrence A. Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D., Principal Deputy Director, NIH.
|
|
Large Clinical Trial Shows Fish Oil and Vitamin D Supplements Do Not Prevent Cardiovascular Disease or Cancer
|
|
Results were recently published from the Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial (VITAL), the first large clinical trial to investigate whether dietary supplements of vitamin D and/or omega-3s from fish oil reduce the risk of heart disease or cancer in adults over age 50. In this trial, which was co-sponsored by ODS and other National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutes and centers, researchers randomized 25,871 men and women who had never had a heart attack, stroke, or cancer to one of four treatments for a median of 5.3 years: 2,000 IU of vitamin D; 1,000 mg of omega-3s from fish oil; 2,000 IU of vitamin D + 1,000 mg of omega-3s from fish oil; or placebo. Neither vitamin D alone nor omega-3s alone or in combination reduced major cardiovascular events (the combined incidence of myocardial infarction, stroke, or death from cardiovascular causes) or cancer incidence. Some subgroup analyses were statistically significant, but since these findings were in subgroups, they should be interpreted with caution. For example, participants taking omega-3s experienced a statistically significant 28 percent reduction in total myocardial infarction rates—including a 77 percent reduction among African Americans (N=5,106) and a 40 percent reduction among those who consumed less than 1.5 servings of fish per week. The researchers will continue to monitor the study participants and publish additional results when they become available.
|
|
Application Process Now Open for ODS Research Practicum, May 29–31
|
|
ODS will hold the next Mary Frances Picciano Dietary Supplement Research Practicum from May 29–31, 2019, on the NIH main campus in Bethesda, MD. Approximately 80 individuals will be selected to participate.
The deadline to apply is Thursday, ?February 28, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
|
|
New ODS Dietary Supplement Fact Sheets
|
|
Funding Opportunities
?
There are three new Funding Opportunity Announcements for the NIH Consortium for Advancing Research on Botanical and Other Natural Products (CARBON) Program:
- RFA OD 19-001: Botanical Dietary Supplements Research Centers (BDSRC) (U19 Clinical Trial Optional)
- RFA AT 19-002: Natural Products NMR Open Data Exchange (NP-NODE) (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
- RFA AT 19-003: Center for Natural Product Technology, Methodology, and Productivity Optimization (NP-TEMPO) (U41 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
Also available:
- Administrative Supplements for Validation Studies of Analytical Methods for Dietary Supplement Constituents (Admin Supp - Clinical Trial Not Allowed): PA-18-818
- Administrative Supplements for Research on Dietary Supplements (Admin Supp - Clinical Trial Not Allowed) to provide supplemental funding for investigating the role of dietary supplements and/or their ingredients in health maintenance and disease prevention: PA-18-817
|
|
ODS Seminar Series
Throughout the academic year, ODS hosts seminars by scientists who conduct research on dietary supplements and related topics. The seminars take place monthly from 11 a.m. to noon in the ground floor conference room at 6100 Executive Boulevard, Rockville, MD. Contact ODS to receive seminar announcements and information for viewing via webinar at [email protected].
|
|
ODS Scholars Symposium
At the ODS Scholars Symposium on January 7, six NIH intramural scholars who were awarded scholarships in 2018 presented their work. The ODS Research Scholars Program, directed by Cindy D. Davis, Ph.D., is a 1-year competitive scholarship opportunity to study the role of dietary supplements in health promotion and disease prevention, targeted toward early career intramural scientists. Also, at the symposium, several federal government scientists presented their posters on topics in their fields of dietary supplements and nutrition. Pictured on the right, Nancy Emenaker, Ph.D., M.Ed., R.D., Program Director, Division of Cancer Prevention, National Cancer Institute, discusses her poster, Nutrition Trends: A Look at Resources for Understanding Dietary Supplements Used by Cancer Patients, with Adam J. Kuszak, Ph.D.
?
|
|
ODS welcomed five representatives from the Association for Health Economics Research and Social Insurance and Welfare of Japan on August 22, 2018. During the visit, facilitated by LaVerne L. Brown, Ph.D., ODS Health Scientist Administrator, ODS staff presented information highlighting several ODS programs.
|
|
|
|
ODS Acting Director Joseph M. Betz, Ph.D., and Douglas “Duffy” MacKay, N.D., Senior Vice President, Scientific and Regulatory Affairs, Council for Responsible Nutrition, presented Supplements at Your Fingertips: Two Dietary Supplement Databases Designed to Change the Way We See the Marketplace, at a SupplySide West Central Stage presentation, November 9, 2018, in Las Vegas.
Photo courtesy of Danielle Dunlap, Informa
|
|
Paula B. Luis, Ph.D., Research Instructor, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Department of Pharmacology, presented her recent work validating an analytical method to aid investigations of curcumin metabolism, in a poster at the AOAC International Annual Meeting & Exposition, August 27, 2018, in Toronto, Canada. This validated method will help researchers better understand the formation and function of metabolites that may be involved in curcumin’s biological activity. Dr. Luis’s meeting attendance and travel was sponsored by ODS through a competitive award to support young investigators in natural product and dietary supplement research. Also at the AOAC meeting, Joseph M. Betz, Ph.D., chaired the Wiley Award Symposium titled Molecular Approaches to Botanical Authentication and participated in two roundtable discussions. Adam J. Kuszak, Ph.D., gave a talk titled The Benefits of Quality Assurance Programs from an NIH Perspective, and Stephen A. Wise, Ph.D., gave a presentation titled The World of Reference Materials—Development, Characterization, and Various Uses.
ODS’s Barbara C. Sorkin, Ph.D., along with Craig Hopp, Ph.D., and Ashlee Tipton, Ph.D., from NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), conducted a workshop titled Grant Writing Strategies at the American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP) 2018 Annual Meeting in July 2018 in Lexington, KY. Also, Roger Linington, Ph.D., associate professor at the Simon Fraser University Department of Chemistry, presented The Natural Products Atlas; an Open Access Database Platform for Natural Products Discovery. Dr. Linington is co-principal investigator of the NIH Centers for Advancing Research on Botanicals and Other Natural Products (CARBON) Program Center for High-Throughput Functional Annotation of Natural Products. In addition, representatives from the CARBON Center for Natural Product Technologies at the University of Illinois at Chicago conducted a workshop on a plant extract separation method. The current CARBON Program is co-funded by ODS and NCCIH. Several additional CARBON program investigators presented new data in the ASP poster sessions.
Adam J. Kuszak, Ph.D., gave a talk titled Use (and Misuse) of Certified Reference Materials in Basic Biomedical Research at the 15th Biological and Environmental Reference Materials (BERM) meeting September 25, 2018, in Berlin, Germany. He also gave a presentation on September 26 titled Enhancing U.S. Dietary Supplement and Nutrition Research Capacity: The NIH AMRM Program. Stephen A. Wise, Ph.D., gave a keynote presentation titled BERM and the ‘Golden Age’ of Biological and Environmental CRMs, on September 26, 2018.
Cindy D. Davis, Ph.D., gave a presentation on June 24, 2018, at the Nutritional Immunology and the Microbiota: Rules of Engagement in Health and Disease conference titled ODS Extramural Funding Opportunities. This was a meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, held in Leesburg, VA.
|
|
Recent ODS Staff Publications
ODS staff members regularly publish papers that address key issues in dietary supplements and related research. Several of the most recent publications are listed below. For a complete list, see past presentations on the ODS website: Staff Publications
Jun S, Cowan AE, Tooze JA, Gahche JJ, Dwyer JT, Eicher-Miller HA, Bhadra A, Guenther PM, Potischman N, Dodd KW, Bailey RL. Dietary supplement use among U.S. children by family income, food security level, and nutrition assistance program participation status in 2011-2014. Nutrients 2018;10(9). pii: E1212.
Cowan AE, Jun S, Gahche JJ, Tooze JA, Dwyer JT, Eicher-Miller HA, Bhadra A, Guenther PM, Potischman N, Dodd KW, Bailey RL. Dietary supplement use differs by socioeconomic and health-related characteristics among U.S. adults, NHANES 2011-2014. Nutrients 2018;10(8). pii: E1114.
|
|
ODS Media Appearances
Johanna T. Dwyer, D.Sc., R.D., and Jaime J. Gahche, M.P.H., were quoted in the Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter article, Supplements and Older Adults, published September 2018.
|
|
ODS Update provides information on news, activities, and resources from the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS). ODS is a program office within the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The mission of ODS is to strengthen knowledge and understanding of dietary supplements by evaluating scientific information, stimulating and supporting research, disseminating research results, and educating the public to foster an enhanced quality of life and health for the U.S. population.
ODS Update is not copyrighted and is in the public domain. If you copy or distribute its content, please credit the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements and include the publication title and date. Do not use our information in any way that suggests we endorse any product or service.
|
|
About ODS
The Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency—supporting scientific studies that turn discovery into health.
|
|
Contact Us
Office of Dietary Supplements
National Institutes of Health
6100 Executive Blvd., Room 3B01
Bethesda, MD 20892-7517
|
|
|
|
|
|
|