Drug adulteration of food supplements: A threat to public health in the European Union?

Food supplements have been playing an increasingly important role in the consumers' awareness nowadays. They are widespread and - according to popular belief - healthier and safer than synthetic drugs. In the European Union (EU) food supplements are classified as foodstuffs and thus not subjected to any specific safety assessments prior to commercialisation. With the growing popularity of food supplements, there is an increased need for more effective control of their production and distribution. The aim of this study was to examine the food notifications, recorded since 2003 via the EU RASFF database with particular regard to recent years, as well as to evaluate the involvement of different EU state structures in the fight against drug-adulterated food supplements with regard to efficacy and safety. In recent years, the number of RASFF notifications in the category of dietetic foods, food supplements and fortified foods, especially related to unauthorised composition, has increased significantly. The majority of EU Member States authorities, who responded to the study, consider drug-adulterated food supplements to be a public health threat. However, the competences of different official structures within the Member States concerning such products do not appear to be clearly defined. Regulators should thus think of stricter legislative solutions to increase the safety of public health.

Clinical aspects of phage therapy.

Phage therapy (PT) is a unique method of treatment of bacterial infections using bacteriophages (phages)-viruses that specifically kill bacteria, including their antibiotic-resistant strains. Over the last decade a marked increase in interest in the therapeutic use of phages has been observed, which has resulted from a substantial rise in the prevalence of antibiotic resistance of bacteria, coupled with an inadequate number of new antibiotics. The first, and so far the only, center of PT in the European Union is the Phage Therapy Unit (PTU) established at the Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy, Wroclaw, Poland in 2005. This center continues the rich tradition of PT in Poland, which dates from the early 1920s. The main objective of this chapter is to present a detailed retrospective analysis of the results of PT of 153 patients with a wide range of infections resistant to antibiotic therapy admitted for treatment at the PTU between January 2008 and December 2010. Analysis includes the evaluation of both the efficacy and the safety of PT. In general, data suggest that PT can provide good clinical results in a significant cohort of patients with otherwise untreatable chronic bacterial infections and is essentially well tolerated. In addition, the whole complex procedure employed to obtain and characterize therapeutic phage preparations, as well as ethical aspects of PT, is discussed.