Dietary supplements of vitamins and minerals intended for use in children available at the Serbian market

Abstract

Adequate intake of all nutrients throughout every stage of childhood growth and development is essential. Often, dietary supplements (DS) are used to fill perceived nutrient gaps. DS containing vitamins and minerals are the most frequently used DS among children, but the information on their characteristics is scarce. The aims of this research were to identify vitamin and/or mineral DS for children available at the Serbian market, to assess their characteristics and their compliance with the relevant legislation. DS of vitamins and/or minerals for use in children available at the Serbian market were identified by children-related terms on their labels or by their marketed use. Data on the ingredients, contents and recommended daily dose of the selected DS together with information on health claims, pharmaceutical forms and present excipients were collected from DS labels. Compliance of analyzed DS was checked against the national legislation. The potential of present excipients to cause adverse reactions was assessed. A total of 30 different DS containing vitamins and/or minerals were identified and analyzed. Most were multicomponent (83%). The majority contained vitamins C, D, A, B6, B12, and minerals zinc, iron and iodine. In all, 58 health claims were present on the analyzed DS labels, most (93%) were in compliance with the appropriate national Rulebook. The analyzed DS were in solid (63%) and liquid (34%) pharmaceutical forms. Excipients with a known action/effect were present in 77% of the analyzed DS. The majority of the analyzed DS assessed characteristics were compliant with the national regulations, but this research gave rise to several regulatory issues that need to be investigated further. In the future, food legislators should work on keeping the dietary supplement-related regulations current and more strict in cases in which they pertain to vulnerable subpopulations such as children.