Research review priorities

Supplement research priorities

These are research priorities, not recommendations. We selected decisions where public interest, plausible benefit, evidence maturity, and safety stakes make a careful synthesis especially useful.

priority dossiers
148
claim-level questions
444
study extraction underway
148

01 / PRIORITY

How priorities were selected

Priority reflects relevance to healthy aging, frequency of real-world use, maturity of human evidence, the cost of a wrong decision, and the need to separate a valid narrow use from broader marketing claims. It does not rank efficacy or imply that everyone should take the product.

02 / EXTRACTION

What happens next

For every question, we screen the PubMed candidate set, connect multiple publications from the same trial, extract population, dose, comparator, duration, outcomes, harms, and funding, then synthesize supportive, mixed, negative, and safety findings together.

Only screened studies enter audited study and participant totals. Search-result counts and the papers listed here as questions never become evidence by themselves.
121

Sulforaphane

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
1

Why this is a research priority

Human cancer trials remain heterogeneous and biomarker-led, without conclusive disease or survival benefit.

Questions being reviewed
  1. Does sulforaphane improve validated clinical outcomes in any cancer type?
  2. Which sulforaphane or glucoraphanin dose and formulation produces reliable exposure?
  3. What thyroid, gastrointestinal, liver, oncology-treatment, pregnancy, and interaction limits apply?
Open evidence dossier
122

Broccoli sprout extract

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
1

Why this is a research priority

A high-exposure trial demonstrated pollutant-metabolite excretion, not reduced disease, and conversion varies by formulation and microbiome.

Questions being reviewed
  1. Do excretion biomarker changes translate into lower disease risk in exposed populations?
  2. How do glucoraphanin, active sulforaphane, myrosinase, and microbiome differences alter exposure?
  3. What thyroid, gastrointestinal, contamination, medicine, pregnancy, and long-term limits apply?
Open evidence dossier
123

Astaxanthin

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
1

Why this is a research priority

Randomized evidence does not support commonly marketed lipid or glucose claims, and biomarker changes lack demonstrated clinical benefit.

Questions being reviewed
  1. Does astaxanthin meaningfully improve lipids, glucose, blood pressure, or inflammation?
  2. Do skin, eye, exercise, or cardiometabolic biomarker effects improve patient-important outcomes?
  3. What source, dose, pigmentation, blood-pressure, glucose, immune, medicine, and pregnancy limits apply?
Open evidence dossier
124

Lutein

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
1

Why this is a research priority

Macular pigment improves more clearly than visual function, while prevention and single-ingredient conclusions remain limited.

Questions being reviewed
  1. Does lutein alone preserve visual function or slow age-related macular degeneration progression?
  2. Does supplementation prevent age-related macular degeneration in people without established disease?
  3. What dose, smoking, carotenoid combination, medicine, pregnancy, and product-quality limits apply?
Open evidence dossier
125

Zeaxanthin

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
1

Why this is a research priority

Outcome trials pair zeaxanthin with lutein and an AREDS base, so independent benefit cannot be isolated.

Questions being reviewed
  1. Does zeaxanthin independently slow progression to advanced age-related macular degeneration?
  2. What does zeaxanthin add beyond lutein and the rest of an AREDS2 formulation?
  3. What dose, smoking, carotenoid balance, medicine, pregnancy, and long-term limits apply?
Open evidence dossier

03 / SOURCES

Research standards

The review begins with federal evidence summaries and PubMed records, then moves to trial-level extraction. Product claims or another publisher’s evidence grade are not copied into the ledger.

NIH Office of Dietary Supplements ↗PubMed / NCBI ↗NCCIH ↗