Counterfeits herbal medicines and dietary supplements-qualityand safety

10^th International Conference on Traditional & Alternative Medicine

March 03-04, 2022 | Webinar

Mohammad Kamil

Lotus Holistic Health Institute Abu Dhabi, UAE

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Altern Integr Med

Abstract :

Counterfeit, poor quality, or adulterated herbal medicines & dietary supplements in international markets are serious safety threats. These fraudulent products can cause serious injury .The 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) made dietary supplements a separate category of foods and established separate regulations for them. The Act determined that the responsibility for the safety and efficacy of products and accuracy of health claims on labels rested solely on firms, not FDA. FDA has identified an emerging trend where over-the-counter herbal products, frequently represented as dietary supplements, contain undeclared /hidden active ingredients that could be harmful. The global dietary supplements industry was valued more than USD 96 billion in 2017, and it is expected to reach USD XX billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 6.9%, during the forecast period. The purpose of this talk is to describe the herbal medicine & dietary supplement fraud i.e. deliberate substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of ingredients or packaging about a product for economic gain, based on practical laboratory experiments and using authenticated plant samples and standard chemicals/medicines .Fraud involving foods & dietary supplements consist of substitution with cheap, less potent and spurious materials or diluting the valuable ingredient with an inexpensive one . Food items being used daily e. g. honey, olive oil, cranberry, pomegranate and spices particularly saffron & cinnamon also in chocolates, some of it have been found to contain PDE-5 inhibitors which may cause fatal side effects particularly with nitrates. Some estimates place the cost of food fraud globally as high as 10-15 billion dollars per year. Furthermore, Quite a number of these dietary supplements—promoted mainly for weight loss, sexual enhancement, diabetes and bodybuilding—that are found to contain hidden or deceptively labeled ingredients, such as synthetic steroids,PDE-5 inhibitors or their analogs (closely-related drugs).These products look like dietary supplements but they do not qualify as dietary supplements/ ingredients. Some of these products contain hidden prescription ingredients at levels much higher than those found in an approved drug product and are dangerous to public health.

Biography :

Mohammad Kamil completed his Ph.D. Chartered Chemist and Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (London), presently working as Director General of Lotus Holistic &Medical Health Institute ,Abu Dhabi, UAE. He Headed the TCAM Research, Zayed Complex for Herbal Research & Trad.Medicine at DOH, A.D., UAE .A recipient of Common Wealth Award-London; Convention Award of Chemical Society-India; Association of Common Wealth Universities -London; and Global award on Unani Medicine; Sheikh Zayed International Award for Herbal Research and various other prestigious honors & awards. Worked as in charge of Drug lab.MoH India, Professor at Jamia Hamdard University,. More than 400 papers and abstracts in reputed journals and international conferences are at his credit; chaired a no. of International Scientific sessions and presented invited talks as plenary and invited speaker at various International conferences / symposia. Associated with publication of many books; Author of six books besides five/six chapters in different books; Research work cited widely in books e.g. Advance in research, Chapman and Hall, London, New York; Melbourne; Studium Press,USA, UNIDO-Italy besides reputed International Journals.