Quality Standards Issued For Testing Herbal Products

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Quality Standards Issued For Testing Herbal Products

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=40710

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued

the first suite of Standard Reference Materials (SRMs) in a planned

series of reference materials for botanical dietary supplements.

The dietary supplement industry has exploded in the past decade to

about 29,000 products, with about 1,000 new products introduced each

year, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In 2001

NIST began working with the FDA and the National Institutes of

Health's Office of Dietary Supplements (NIH/ODS) on a series of SRMs

of popular botanical dietary supplements. Manufacturers can use these

materials for quality control, and researchers can use them to ensure

that their laboratory analyses of supplements are accurate. Products

such as botanical supplements, that have been derived from extracts

of plant materials are challenging to analyze accurately because of

their complex sample matrices.

The new NIST reference materials were designed primarily for quality

control of supplements containing ephedra, a plant once widely used

in herbal weight-loss products. Ephedra products were pulled from the

market by the FDA in 2004 after being linked to cardiovascular

problems, but the new test materials remain valuable both to assure

that new products are not adulterated with ephedra and because they

also can be used to improve several other key measurements in other

botanical supplements, including concentrations of potentially toxic

heavy metals.

The new reference materials represent several different forms of

ephedra and include powdered plant material (SRM 3240), a ground

solid oral dosage form (SRM 3243), and a protein powder (SRM 3244).

The materials are certified for their concentrations of the ephedrine

alkaloids and potentially toxic elements (including arsenic, cadmium,

lead and mercury). SRM 3243 also provides certified values for

synephrine (a compound in some of the " ephedra-free " weight-loss

products) and caffeine. SRM 3244 adds values for caffeine,

theobromin, theophylline, and nutrients including fat, protein,

carbohydrate, individual fatty acids and amino acids, vitamins and

nutritive elements.

Future dietary supplement SRMs will include: Ginkgo biloba, saw

palmetto, bitter orange, carrot extract, green tea, blueberries,

cranberries, bilberries and St. 's wort. For further information

visit www.nist.gov/srm.