Body-building supplement blamed for U.S. deaths

Release at 5 P.M.

By Gene Emery

BOSTON, (Reuters) - People who use a dietary supplement found in some body-building products are risking death, researchers in Minnesota, Texas and Florida report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Lead researcher Deborah Zvosec of the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis studied nine cases where people fell ill after consuming products containing the supplement known formally as 1,4-butanediol or BD. Two died.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has identified 71 deaths caused by BD and another 40 or so are being investigated as suspicious, Zvosec told Reuters.

"And that's just the tip of the iceberg," she said because many people with overdoses don't seek treatment.

There has been little formal study of BD, which is also used as an industrial solvent. Promoters claim it is a natural and nontoxic way to build muscle, improve athletic performance, increase libido and sexual performance, reduce wrinkles, reverse baldness and reduce stress, depression and insomnia. The claims have not been proven.

The chemical is often listed on ingredient labels as tetramethylene glycol, butylene glycol or sucol-B, and it is contained in products with brand names like Thunder Nectar, InnerG, Amino flex, Rejuv+Nite, Liquid Gold, Thunder, Serenity, X-12 and N-Force.

In 1990, the Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of its chemical cousin, gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB). But after Congress passed a 1994 law making it harder for the federal government to regulate "health foods," manufacturers began marketing a similar product called gamma-butyrolactone (GBL), according to Zvosec and her colleagues.

In January 1999, the FDA warned that GBL was also dangerous.

After the health food industry voluntarily recalled products with GBL, BD "began to be marketed as a 'replacement product,' for gamma-butyrolactone," and promoters expanded their claims for the new products, the Zvosec team said.

In May 1999, the FDA issued a warning about 1,4-butanediol supplements as well, the researchers said.

Nonetheless, "extensive marking continues on the Internet, and the use of all three compounds, sometimes interchangeably, has increased," the researchers said.

"If you talk to 100 doctors, maybe 10 have heard about this," said co-author Dr. Stephen W. Smith of the Hennepin County Medical Center. In an interview, he said doctors can identify the problem if they know what to look for.