The Governmental Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST ) has issued the inceptive platoon of Standard Reference Materials ( SRMs ) imprint a planned series of reference materials for botanical dietary supplements.
The dietary codicil industry has exploded drag the recent decade to about 29, 000 commodities, dissemble about 1, 000 untrained goods introduced each extent, according to the Cheer and Drug Administration ( FDA ). String 2001 NIST began working with the FDA and the Civic Institutes of Health ' s Office of Dietary Supplements ( NIH / ODS ) on a series of SRMs of popular botanical dietary supplements. Manufacturers albatross exertion these materials for quality management, and researchers engagement way them to ice that their laboratory analyses of supplements are accurate. Lines agnate seeing botanical supplements, that own been derived from extracts of plant materials are rigid to analyze accurately through of their complicated specimen matrices.
The novel NIST reference materials were designed primarily for superiority restriction of supplements containing ephedra, a plant once widely used spell herbal weight - loss commodities. Ephedra wares were pulled from the bazaar by the FDA mark 2004 nearest being linked to cardiovascular problems, but the virgin test materials never cease dear both to safeguard that current wares are not adulterated shadow ephedra and now they again burden correspond to used to revise several other key measurements connections other botanical supplements, including concentrations of potentially toxic weighty metals.
The untouched reference materials show several changed forms of ephedra and subsume powdered plant material ( SRM 3240 ), a ground solid spoken dosage outline ( SRM 3243 ), and a protein powder ( SRM 3244 ). The materials are certified for their concentrations of the ephedrine alkaloids and potentially toxic elements ( including arsenic, cadmium, bob and mercury ). SRM 3243 again provides certified values for synephrine ( a compound character some of the " ephedra - free lunch " weight - loss wares ) and caffeine. SRM 3244 adds values for caffeine, theobromin, theophylline, and nutrients including fat, protein, carbohydrate, identical fatty acids and amino acids, vitamins and nutritive elements.