A descriptive survey study in endocrinology clinic: evaluation of the use of natural products

Abstract

Objective

The use of herbal products/dietary supplements (HP/DS) in endocrinal chronic diseases is growing. However, no studies have evaluated their use in patients who present to endocrinology and metabolic diseases clinics. This descriptive study aims to investigate the rate of HP/DS use and the factors affecting this in patients who presented to Karadeniz Technical University (KTU) Farabi Hospital Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases Clinic, Türkiye between 01.11.2021 and 01.05.2022.

Methods

Five hundred six questionnaires with acceptable data quality were included this investigation. The data were analyzed on SPSS version 23.0 software. The factors with the greatest effect on the use of HP/DS were determined using binary logistic regression analysis.

Results

Analysis showed that 49.4% of the participants used HP/DS. The main factors affecting the use of herbal products were age, diagnosis of the disease, and treatment compliance problems. The most frequently used products were lemon, cinnamon, black cumin, ginger, turmeric, and dill. The participants main sources of information about HP/DS were friends/relatives, the internet/social media, and television, respectively. 74.8% of the participants using HP/DS did not inform their physcisian/pharmacist about such use, although 81.8% of these nevertheless wished to receive information from these occupational groups.

Conclusion

Herbal product monitoring in patients should be performed in collaboration with pharmacists, herbal product use should be investigated, and counseling services should be made available in order to maintain and promote public health.

Keywords:

• Medicinal plant
• dietary supplement
• endocrine diseases
• herb-drug interaction
• thyroid
• diabetes

Transparency

Declaration of funding

There is no funding for this study.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

İG: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing-original draft. GR: Conceptualization, Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Project administration. UÖ, HC, MK: Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Project administration.

Acknowledgements

This study was presented as an oral presentation in the form of a summary at the 3rd International Aegean Health Areas (UESAS’23) symposium.

Data availability statement

The authors agree to make data and materials supporting the results or analyses presented in this paper available upon reasonable request.