Vitamin supplement benfotiamine little more than 'snake oil'

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Public release date: 11-Jun-2008

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/bc-vsl061008.php

Contact: Charlotte Webber

charlotte.webber@...

44-0

BioMed Central

Vitamin supplement little more than 'snake oil'

A popular vitamin supplement is being advertised with claims that are

demonstrably untrue, as revealed by research published in the open

access journal BMC Pharmacology.

Benfotiamine is a synthetic derivative of thiamine (vitamin B1). It is

marketed heavily as a dietary supplement using a selection of

unsubstantiated, 'not-quite-medical' claims that tend to characterize

this field. A large part of this campaign has been built around the

belief that benfotiamine is lipid-soluble and, therefore, more

physiologically active. Scientific research led by Dr Lucien Bettendorff

of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology at the University

of Liège, Belgium, has entirely disproved these claims.

A severe deficiency of thiamine is known to cause weight loss, emotional

disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness and pain in the

limbs, and periods of irregular heart rate. Deficiencies can occur as a

result of alcoholism or malnutrition. As thiamine itself is very poorly

absorbed by the body, it must be taken in as various precursor forms.

This research shows that benfotiamine may not be as effective in this

regard as has been claimed, in particular concerning its ability to

raise effective thiamine levels in the central nervous system.

According to Bettendorff, " We suspect that those companies selling

benfotiamine have poisoned much of the recent literature in an attempt

to bestow it with properties that it does not have " . Benfotiamine has

been previously shown to prevent several diabetic complications in

experimental animal models. The researchers carried out experiments in

mice in which benfotiamine was administered using several different

techniques and the resulting levels of thiamine were measured in various

parts of the body. Contrary to other claims about its solubility, the

results show that benfotiamine is only sparingly soluble in water under

physiological conditions and cannot be dissolved in octanol or oils.

As Bettendorff explains, " Benfotiamine is very often considered a

'lipid-soluble' thiamine precursor from the disulfide derivative family

though it is neither lipid-soluble, nor a disulfide. Sometimes, it is

considered to have more biological activity than thiamine disulfides,

but our study shows that it does not even penetrate cell membranes,

except in those cells containing an ecto-alkaline phosphatase. There is

no evidence that benfotiamine would be more effective than other

precursors as a therapeutic agent for complications of diabetes. "

Due to the wide-reaching nature of the false claims about this

supplement, it was important to the authors that their work be published

in BMC Pharmacology as it is an open access journal that makes research

freely available.

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1. Benfotiamine, a synthetic S-acyl thiamine derivative, has different

mechanisms of action and a different pharmacological profile than

lipid-soluble thiamine disulfide derivatives

Marie-Laure Volvert, Sandrine Seyen, Marie Piette, Brigitte Evrard,

Marjorie Gangolf, Jean-Christophe Plumier and Lucien Bettendorff

BMC Pharmacology (in press)

During embargo, article available here:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1157453871172044_article.pdf?random=642495

After the embargo, article available at journal website:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcpharmacol/

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on the day of publication.

2. BMC Pharmacology is an open access journal publishing original

peer-reviewed research articles in aspects of the discovery, design,

uses, effects, modes of action and metabolism of chemically defined

therapeutic and toxic agents. BMC Pharmacology (ISSN 1471-2210) is

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and Google Scholar.

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