Market of Dietary Supplements: Analysis of Health Benefits and Risk in Cancer

Abstract

In the current state of the art, there is widespread usage of dietary supplements (DSs) by cancer patients both during the cancer treatment and during the drug holidays as well. However, there is lack of empirical data in relation to their safety or efficacy. The available research data show that there should be judicious usage of DSs by cancer patients, which otherwise may aggravate the progression of cancer. Besides these ground clinical realities about the benefits of DSs in cancer prevention, the market of DSs is growing in logarithmic fashion. US people spent over $36 billion in 2014 on dietary supplements. In fact, the consumer victimizing advertisements of DSs are easily accessed by cancer survivors through Internet, social media and television and inspire them to use it as an adjunct or traditional therapy. These self-prescriptions of DSs by cancer patients are mostly based on anecdotal evidences. More often owing to the drastic change in the psychology and mindset of cancer patients, they do not inform the inclusions of DSs to oncologist or their primary caretakers. There is need to rationalize the intake of DSs and quantify the does by assessing the analytical profile of need and deficiency in individual cancer type/patient so as to avoid the DS-related adversities and minimize the financial burden.