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.Beta-alanine
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
A small, task-specific performance effect is often inflated into a general strength or endurance claim, while paresthesia and formulation-dependent dosing need context.
Questions being reviewed
- Which exercise durations and test types show a meaningful beta-alanine effect?
- Does improved exercise capacity translate into real performance or strength gains?
- How do dose size, sustained-release formulations, paresthesia, and study duration change safety?
Beetroot / nitrate
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
Blood-pressure and exercise claims span different populations and measures; pooled effects are modest and sensitive to dose, timing, fitness, and measurement setting.
Questions being reviewed
- Does nitrate-rich beetroot juice lower clinic, home, or 24-hour blood pressure in hypertension?
- Which exercise tasks, doses, and populations show a practical performance effect?
- How do oral bacteria, medication, age, and short trial duration limit interpretation and safety?
HMB
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
HMB may help preserve lean mass in selected older adults, but effects on strength and function are inconsistent and often confounded by exercise or multi-ingredient nutrition.
Questions being reviewed
- Does HMB preserve muscle mass during aging, sarcopenia, illness, or inactivity?
- Do changes in lean mass translate into strength, mobility, or clinically meaningful function?
- Does HMB add benefit beyond resistance exercise, and can HMB-only effects be separated from complete nutrition products?
Vitamin A
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
Deficiency treatment is essential, but population-wide prevention findings differ sharply by age, nutrition, formulation, pregnancy, smoking, and dose.
Questions being reviewed
- Which deficiency-affected populations gain meaningful health or survival benefits?
- Does routine supplementation improve mortality or other clinical outcomes when deficiency is not established?
- How do preformed retinol, beta-carotene, dose, pregnancy, and smoking change safety?
Vitamin K
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
Vitamin K1, MK-4, and MK-7 are often grouped together despite different doses and endpoints, while bone and calcification biomarkers are easily mistaken for proven clinical benefit.
Questions being reviewed
- Does vitamin K improve bone density or prevent clinically important fractures?
- Do changes in calcification or vitamin K biomarkers translate into fewer cardiovascular events?
- How do K1, MK-4, MK-7, dose, and vitamin K-antagonist medicines change interpretation and safety?
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.