NIH Office Of Dietary Supplements Expands Resear...( The Office of Dietary Supplements (OD...)

The Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced support for three new research grants to explore the potential role of dietary supplements in health promotion and disease prevention. These new projects bring to eight the number of studies now being funded by the ODS in conjunction with selected NIH Institutes through the NIH Research Enhancement Awards Program.

The Research Enhancement Awards Program (REAP), originally designed by the NIH Office of Research on Womens Health, is a process whereby investigator-initiated grant applications are received and reviewed through the standard NIH peer review process. Highly meritorious applications that fall just outside an Institutes funding resources and are within the research interest of the ODS can be nominated by NIH Institutes to receive full or partial funding from ODS. The ODS has committed $400,000, or 40 percent of its FY 1997 budget, to support these eight grants in cooperation with seven NIH Institutes.

These three new grants, along with the five we currently support, will address some of the many unanswered questions about dietary supplements and significantly improve our understanding of the role of dietary supplements in health, said Dr. Bernadette M. Marriott, Director of the ODS. Were enthusiastic about the positive reception the Institutes have given the REAP program and their interest in partnering with the ODS in support of these important projects.

In conjunction with the National Cancer Institute, the ODS is funding a new project at the State University of New York Health Sciences Center in Stony Brook to study in cancer patients the potential benefits and risks of taking supplements of L-arginine, an amino acid. Arginine influences protein synthesis rates and cell proliferation markers, and results of these studies will improve understanding of how supplements of this amino acid may affect tumor stimulation a
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Contact: Bernadette M. Marriott, Ph.D.
301-402-2920
NIH/National Institutes of Health
25-Sep-1997