Relying on dietary supplements will not prevent or treat dementia

FDA estimates that 80 per cent of older adults rely on dietary supplements, to prevent or treat Alzheimer's

Donna Kaye Hill realised that her 80-year-old mother was faltering cognitively when her phone suddenly stopped working. When Hill called the phone company, “they told me she hadn’t paid her bill in three months.”

 

Finding other alarming evidence of memory gaps, she took her mother, Katie, to a memory clinic. A geriatrician there diagnosed dementia and recommended two prescription drugs and a dietary supplement, a form of vitamin E.

 

Katie Hill dutifully took vitamin E capsules, along with a host of other medications, until she died four years later. As she declined, her daughter didn’t think the vitamin, or the two prescription medications, was making much difference.

 

“But if it doesn’t hurt, if there’s a chance it helps even a tiny bit, why not?” she reasoned. Hill, 62, a retired public employee in Danville, takes fish oil capsules daily herself, hoping they’ll help ward off the disease that killed her mother.

 

The elder Hill was unusual only in that a doctor had recommended the supplement; most older Americans are taking them without medical guidance. The Food and Drug Administration estimates that 80 per cent of older adults rely on dietary supplements, many purporting to prevent or treat Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

 

Last month, the FDA cracked down on this burgeoning market, sending warning letters or advisories to 17 companies selling about 60 supplements with names like Cogni-Flex and Mind Ignite.

 

The warnings pointed out that the companies had touted these products as working like Alzheimer’s drugs, “but naturally and without side effects.” Or as “clinically shown to help diseases of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s.” The pills, oils and capsules were said to treat other diseases, too, from stroke to erectile dysfunction.

 

Claiming that these products were intended for “the cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease” meant that they were drugs, the agency’s letters said.

 

And since they were drugs the FDA had never reviewed or approved for safety and effectiveness, the companies now must submit applications for approval or stop making such claims. Over the past five years, the agency has taken action against 40 other products making Alzheimer’s claims.

 

The supplements’ appeal is understandable. A growing older population with longer life spans means more people with dementia, though in population-based studies in this and other Western countries, its prevalence has fallen.

 ©2019 The New York Times News Service