New Dietary Supplements Database

The burgeoning market in dietary supplements has grown so rapidly that researchers as well as the general public often find themselves confused by a morass of manufacturer claims about each promising new product. Enter the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Library (NAL), recently launched a new Internet web site containing a compendium of international scientific literature on dietary supplements published from 1986 to present.

The project, three years in development, is known as the IBIDS (International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements) Database. It contains well over 3 million citations, bibliographic records and abstracts of journal articles on the topic of dietary supplements, including vitamins, minerals and herbal and botanical supplements. It is the only database that specifically focuses on research from medical and international scientific journals.

Visitors to IBIDS can simultaneously search multiple existing medical, pharmaceutical, botanical and agricultural databases, and for those unfamiliar with the terminology used, a drop-down list of keywords is available as a search tool.

“Both NAL and the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements are tremendously proud of the product we have crafted,” explains Pamela Andre, director of the NAL. As well they should be. This is a site whose time is long overdue, as evidenced by the home page disclaimer which reads, in part, “...IBIDS is experiencing unusually high traffic. If you have trouble logging on, please try again soon.”