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.Asian ginseng
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
Asian ginseng is promoted for energy, cognition, glucose control, and sexual function, but effects are small, outcome-specific, and sensitive to preparation quality.
Questions being reviewed
- Does Asian ginseng meaningfully reduce disease-related fatigue?
- Do memory or glucose-marker changes translate into useful clinical benefit?
- What evidence supports erectile-function claims, and how do product variability and interactions change safety?
Green tea extract
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
Concentrated green-tea extract is not equivalent to brewed tea: weight and blood-pressure effects are small, while high-dose catechins can injure the liver.
Questions being reviewed
- Does green-tea extract produce clinically meaningful weight loss or weight maintenance?
- How large are blood-pressure and cardiometabolic-marker effects, and do they predict fewer events?
- How do EGCG dose, fasting, and concentrated solid extracts change liver risk?
N-acetylcysteine (NAC)
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
NAC is an established medicine in specific settings, but over-the-counter claims for lungs, kidneys, and mental health rely on inconsistent and indication-specific evidence.
Questions being reviewed
- Does long-term oral NAC prevent COPD exacerbations or preserve lung function?
- Does NAC prevent clinically important kidney injury after intravenous contrast?
- Which psychiatric symptoms, if any, improve when NAC is added to standard treatment?
Alpha-lipoic acid
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
Alpha-lipoic acid has short-term diabetic-neuropathy evidence, but oral and intravenous routes differ and statistically significant weight changes are modest.
Questions being reviewed
- Does oral alpha-lipoic acid improve diabetic-neuropathy symptoms or objective nerve function?
- What short-term benefit is supported for intravenous alpha-lipoic acid, and can it be generalized to supplements?
- Is the average weight effect clinically meaningful, and what dose-related tolerability limits apply?
Taurine
- Review stage
- Extracting studies
- audited research papers
- 4
Why this is a research priority
Taurine is promoted for cardiovascular, metabolic, and exercise benefits, but most human evidence concerns short-term surrogate measures rather than disease events or healthy longevity.
Questions being reviewed
- How much does oral taurine change glucose, lipids, and blood pressure, and are clinical events reduced?
- Does taurine improve symptoms or outcomes in heart failure or cardiomyopathy?
- Which endurance tasks and doses show a reproducible performance effect?
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.