It is a normal phenomenon for dietary supplement marketers to put all sorts of claims on their dietary supplement products, especially those that promote the goodness of their products. As consumers, we need to be able to critically judge whether the claims are true or not. In the paragraphs below, I will write about techniques used by companies to make their products look superior to others.

Firstly, companies may resort to the use of faulty comparators. For example, a comparison may be made between a drug from company A (let us call the supplement produced by this company is called X) and from another company B (let us call the supplement produced by this company is called Y). Company A may do a study using 500mg of X against 250mg of Y, and results will most likely favour X because a higher dose is used. In actual fact, if the same dose was used for both supplements, efficacy is most likely equivalent. This method is also frequently used in the pharmaceutical industry for promotion of medications.

Secondly, companies may also use surrogate endpoints to deviate the focus of the condition under consideration to another endpoint. What this actually means is that the actual measure for the condition under consideration is substituted with another measure which is faulty, so the comparison is ultimately faulty. For instance, haemoglobin levels of a certain supplement is the actual measure for the supplement to exert its effect, but companies may measure the amount of supplement in blood serum instead, and hence give a false estimate of efficacy.

In addition, the relative risk versus the absolute risk factor is almost always used by companies to show superiority over other products on the market. For example, let us assume the risk of getting a disease for not taking a certain supplement is 3% and the risk of getting a disease while taking the supplement is 1.5%. The relative risk is the ratio between the two risks, and the value is 3/1.5 = 2. This means the risk of getting a disease without taking the supplement is 2 times more likely than when you take it. However, absolute risk is the difference between the two risks, and hence the value is 3-1.5 = 1.5. This signifies that it is only 1.5 times more likely to get a disease without taking the supplement than when you take it. Most of the time relative risk will be a bigger value than the absolute risk, therefore companies tend to use relative risk more often to show superiority of their products. In actual fact, the correct measure for risk is the absolute risk.

Having said all that, I would advise all of us to just be critical and judgmental when it comes to reading the label claims on a dietary supplement bottle. Companies are always finding ways to woo customers to buy their products, and they may resort to unethical ways to attract customers. In short, be wary!

Adapted from:
1. http://www.helium.com/tm/38149 6/normal-phenomenon-pharmaceut ical-company (my own article)

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