Dimethylglycine (N,N-Dimethylglycine)

Abstract

Dimethylglycine was discovered in 1943 (Tonda and Hart, 1992). It is found in some but not all formulations of pangamic acid (vitamin B15). Pangamic acid is not an identifiable substance because of the variety of products that have been marketed as such. One pangamic acid formulation that contains dimethylglycine is the “Russian formula,” which was patented in 1975 and contains 61.5% calcium gluconate and 38.5% dimethylglycine (Gray and Titlow, 1982a). This is not the same as the pangamic acid isolated by Krebs and associates in 1951, which was studied in the treatment of cardiovascular disease in the 1950s and is structurally distinct from dimethylglycine (Kemp, 1959). Pangamic acid has been sold as a dietary supplement in the United States at least since the late 1970s, when the lay press celebrated its benefits (Colman et al., 1980). Although pangamic acid is also known as vitamin B15, it is not actually a vitamin because no deficiency state has been identified, and it has no known nutritional value (Colman et al., 1980; Gray and Titlow, 1982a). FoodScience Laboratories was the original distributor of vitamin B15 in the United States, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) challenged the company in court in the early 1980s in an attempt to remove the product from the market (Gray and Titlow, 1982a). As a result of this litigation, dimethylglycine continued to be marketed, but the use of the terms “vitamin B15” and “pangamic acid” fell out of favor (Hoorn, 1989). Currently, however, products labeled as vitamin B15, pangamic acid, and diemthylglycine are available. Some Internet sites incorrectly use the terms pangamic acid and vitamin B15 as synonyms for dimethylglycine.