Good news for herbal medicine users. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., recently announced funding for five university-based dietary supplements research centers. Jointly funded by NIH’s National Center for Comple-mentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and its Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS), these centers will focus on herbs, specifically their constituent properties and mechanisms of action.

Although those in the herbal industry are delighted with the new research, there is some disappointment that there are no new clinical trials. According to Mark Blumenthal, founder and executive director of the nonprofit American Botanical Council in Austin, Texas, “With reduced government funding [compared to previously] and the increased costs of university overhead, along with NCCAM’s own preference for a mechanistic rather than clinical focus, it would have been almost self-defeating for an applicant to present clinical research as part of a grant proposal.”

Fortunately, clinical funding will continue in other areas. “As a practical matter, it’s likely no new clinical work will take place in these five botanical centers,” Blumenthal adds, “but NCCAM and ODS will continue to fund new clinical trials through other grants. We are pleased to see much-needed research in documenting the safety and efficacy of many botanicals.”

The universities will study the effects of herbs on age-related diseases, immunomodulation, inflammation, women’s health, and metabolic syndromes such as obesity and diabetes. According to the 2002 National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, some 38.2 million American adults (about 19 percent) use nonvitamin, nonmineral natural products—primarily botanical supplements.

For more information: http:// nccam.nih.gov/htdig/search.html.