The Overlap of Dietary Supplement and Pharmaceutical Use in the MIDUS National Study

Abstract

Introduction. In the United States, dietary supplement (DS) use is common, often takes place outside of the purview of health care providers, and may involve DS in combination with pharmaceuticals. This situation has led to concerns about interactions between DS and pharmaceuticals, as well as the risks from polypharmacy and polysupplement use. Methods. We used data from the Midlife in the US study (MIDUS 2 Survey) to examine DS and prescription pharmaceutical use in 3876 study participants in order to determine the demographics of high-users (5 or more) of DS and pharmaceuticals and the presence of DS-pharmaceutical co-use. Results. Over 69% of study participants regularly used DS, 49.6% regularly used both DS and pharmaceuticals, and 6.3% and 8.7% were high-users of pharmaceuticals and DS, respectively. High-users of DS, pharmaceuticals, and either were more likely than the whole cohort to be female and of lower income. Conclusions. These findings corroborate those of other national studies with respect to the demographics of DS users but add new information about people at risk of DS-pharmaceutical interactions, not an insignificant proportion of the population examined by this dataset.

Diagnoses associated with dietary supplement use in a national dataset

“…14 Other studies have corroborated the correlation between DS use and the use of OTC and prescription medications. 10,21 With respect to diagnoses, significantly increased DS use was found among participants with eye disease (including glaucoma), cancer, elevated lipids, and arthritis, though these trends were found to be non-significant with the adjusted statistical analysis. Although study participants with physician-diagnosed elevated lipid levels showed borderline increased DS use (unadjusted), there was no difference in mean total cholesterol or triglycerides lab values between groups, though there was higher HDL (median 55 to 52) and lower glucose (median 96 to 97) amongst DS users.…”

“…A complete description of the MIDUS project and methodology is available in prior publications. 10,18 To augment the self-reported data collected in the MIDUS survey project, participants completed a medical history, selfadministered questionnaire, and self-reported sleep assessments (see below).…”

“…There is some agreement that DS use is more common in some ethnicities (non-Hispanic white) than others, 9 and among women more than men. 10 While the demographics of DS users remain fairly consistent across medical literature, there remains discrepancy about the conditions DS users have and the reasons why they may choose to use dietary supplements. 11 With respect to diagnoses, adults with multiple chronic conditions (including hypertension, CAD, high cholesterol, cancer, diabetes, lung disease, arthritis, and depression) may be more likely to use multivitamins, vitamins, minerals, and non-vitamin or herbal therapies compared to adults without chronic conditions.…”

Longitudinal Analysis of Complementary Health Approaches in Adults Aged 25–74 Years from the Midlife in the U.S. Survey Sample

“…MIDUS has collected more than 20 years of data on complementary health approach use, but thus far only cross-sectional analyses have been conducted on data of complementary health approach use from wave 1 (1995-1996) to wave 2 (2004-2005) of data collection. [1][2][22][23][24]…”

Factors Related to Disclosure and Nondisclosure of Dietary Supplements in Primary Care, Integrative Medicine, and Naturopathic Medicine

“…In the United States, dietary supplements are a pervasive form of preventative, adjunctive, and alternative healthcare [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. More than half of US adults use di-…”