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.
36

Vitamin B6

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
4

Why this is a research priority

Vitamin B6 has narrow clinical uses, but cognition, nerve, pregnancy, and energy claims are often combined while chronic high-dose pyridoxine can itself cause neuropathy.

Questions being reviewed
  1. How much does pyridoxine improve nausea or vomiting in pregnancy, and in which severity groups?
  2. Does vitamin B6 improve cognition or treat carpal tunnel syndrome or peripheral neuropathy when deficiency is not established?
  3. At what doses and exposure durations can supplemental pyridoxine contribute to sensory neuropathy?
Open evidence dossier
37

Biotin

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
4

Why this is a research priority

Biotin is heavily marketed for hair and nails despite sparse efficacy evidence, while common supplement doses can distort clinically important laboratory tests.

Questions being reviewed
  1. Does biotin improve hair or nails when a specific deficiency or disorder is not established?
  2. Does pharmaceutical high-dose biotin improve disability in progressive multiple sclerosis?
  3. Which biotin doses interfere with laboratory assays, on which platforms, and for how long?
Open evidence dossier
38

Choline

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
4

Why this is a research priority

Choline is essential and pregnancy intake is often low, but prenatal neurodevelopment and adult cognition claims vary by formulation, population, and outcome.

Questions being reviewed
  1. Does prenatal choline supplementation improve child neurodevelopment in the general population?
  2. Does prenatal or postnatal choline help children exposed to heavy maternal alcohol use?
  3. Do choline bitartrate, CDP-choline, or alpha-GPC improve cognition, and can findings be generalized across forms?
Open evidence dossier
39

Ginger

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
4

Why this is a research priority

Ginger has a broad trial literature, but pregnancy, chemotherapy, pain, and metabolic findings differ sharply in quality, dose, formulation, and clinical importance.

Questions being reviewed
  1. Does oral ginger improve nausea or vomiting in pregnancy, and what safety evidence is available?
  2. Does ginger add benefit to standard antiemetics for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting?
  3. Which pain or metabolic outcomes are supported, and how do trial quality and product variability limit interpretation?
Open evidence dossier
40

Garlic extract

Review stage
Extracting studies
audited research papers
4

Why this is a research priority

Garlic preparations may modestly change blood pressure or lipids, but product-specific surrogate effects are often mistaken for proven reductions in cardiovascular events.

Questions being reviewed
  1. How much do aged garlic preparations lower blood pressure in people with hypertension?
  2. How do aged extract, powder, oil, and other formulations differ in their lipid effects?
  3. Are cardiovascular events reduced, and what is known about bleeding, interactions, and tolerability?
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 ↗