Ginseng Supplements: What's in the Bottle?

Source: Tufts University
August 14, 2001 (Reviewed: December 23, 2002)

The herbal dilemma

Each year consumers spend billions of dollars on herbal supplements meant to improve their health and well-being. In the United States, however, there is a lack of governmental manufacturing standards for supplements, including herbal or botanical products, and that has led to questions about whether or not the package labels accurately reflect the products' contents. For example, does a dose of a given herbal supplement actually contain the concentration of the active ingredient that is stated on the product label?

To investigate this question, a group of California researchers recently put ginseng supplements, taken by many consumers to boost energy, to the test. Their results appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Varieties of ginseng

The researchers chose to analyze ginseng products because of their worldwide popularity and because they can be prepared from a variety of plants, raising the likelihood of misidentification. Historically, the term ginseng has referred to products made from the dried roots of various species of the plant genus Panax. There are a number of species of Panax ginseng, and the active ingredients, ginsenosides, occur in differing levels in each species. More recently, products made from a second genus of ginseng Siberian ginseng or Eleutherococcus have also appeared on the market

Testing ginseng supplements

For the purposes of this study, the researchers purchased 25 different ginseng preparations from a health food store. Fourteen of the preparations were from the genus Panax, nine were from the genus Eleutherococcus and two were mixtures. The researchers extracted the active compounds from each supplement and compared them chemically to extractions made from commercially available standardized samples. Their goal was to determine first if the preparation contained the genus of ginseng indicated on the label and second to determine the concentration of active ingredients in each preparation.

They found that all of the products were labeled correctly as to species. However, there was considerable variation in the concentrations of the active ingredients from product to product. In liquid products prepared from Panax ginseng, for example, the total ginsenoside concentration varied from a low of .36 grams per liter to a high of nearly 13 grams per liter. In other words, the product at the high end had 36 times the concentration of ginesenosides as the product at the low end.

Not all the ginseng products tested stated a specific concentration of active ingredients on the package label. Of the 11 that did, however, 5 contained more than the labeled concentration and 6 contained less. Furthermore, actual concentrations ranged from about 10% to more than 325% of the concentration stated on the package label.

What you see may not be what you get

This study adds to a body of evidence that indicates that American consumers should be wary about depending on package labels to correctly identify the contents of herbal preparations. Fortunately, help is on the way for Americans who use these products.

The Food and Drug Administration, the US agency with primary responsibility for overseeing dietary supplements, including herbal preparations, has stated that it intends to issue regulations on good manufacturing practices, focusing on those that "ensure the identity, purity, quality, strength, and composition of dietary supplements."

The U. S. Pharmacopoeia (USP), a well-respected group that has been working with both the supplement industry and the government to establish standards for dietary supplements, has also entered the fray, launching a pilot program to assess the quality of ingredients in products, including herbal supplements. Under this program, manufacturers will be allowed to place a USP certification mark on products that the group has identified as containing quality ingredients in the amount designated on the product label.

Until these standards are in place, however, consumers should be aware that they are relying on the manufacturer to certify that what is on the bottle is actually in the supplement.

Source

• Variability in commercial ginseng products: an analysis of 25 preparations MR. Harkey , GL. Henderson , ME. Gershwin ,  et al. , Am J Clin Nutr, 2001, vol. 73, pp. 1101--1106

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