Dietary supplement databases: Public health tools

Abstract

Dietary supplements (DS) are widely used and contain many bioactive constituents that are significant to health. Databases of DS ingredients are needed to identify contents, document the prevalence of nutrient inadequacy and excess, evaluate interventions involving DS, and assess the contributions of DS product formulations to health. However, DS constituents pose unique challenges to database developers. Ingredient data are poorly characterized, making data entry difficult. Definitions and names of non-nutrient ingredients and chemical analyses of contents are unstandardized. Coding lacks uniformity and ingredients amounts are undisclosed in proprietary blends. DS database software challenges include lack of suitable controlled vocabularies for DS and nutrient analysis software programs and epidemiological questionnaires containing heterogeneous descriptions of similar constituents, leading to disparate results for similar intakes. Computer technology challenges include the lack of ‘crosstalk’ between DS, food, and drug databases. Antiquated software, data architecture and hardware hinder interoperability. Federal government involvement can help to develop DS databases for public use, establish appropriate standards for compiling databases, develop uniform, common definitions for similar ingredients in DS, food, and drug databases, and maximize interoperability between them. Robust, modernized DS databases can be achieved by funding and applying advances in software, data science, and database technology.