A decade-long research has found that over-the-counter supplements have been responsible for sending people to emergency rooms. As per the study, 23,000 visits to emergency rooms have been recorded owing to the supplements.

The supplements include vitamins, sexual enhancements and weight loss aids. The research findings are based on the sample of 63 emergency departments from 2004 to 2013. Through the study, the researchers have raised concerns over the safety of the industry, which is highly unregulated.

But it cannot be ignored that the industry is quite popular. It brought in $14.8 billion in 2007. Inclination of patients was more towards the ones aged between 20 and 34, more than a quarter belonged to this age group.

Among all supplements, weight loss ones were the leading culprit. More than 50% of emergency room visits were due to people who have taken weight loss aids. They generally visited emergency rooms due to complaints of heart related symptoms like palpitations, chest pain or irregular heartbeat.

Next major issue was supplements being swallowed by children, over 21% of emergency visits were by them. “Child-resistant packaging is not required for dietary supplements other than those containing iron, and despite such packaging, iron supplements were the second most commonly implicated type of supplement in unsupervised ingestion by children”, said the researchers.

Another concern raised by researchers was that most of dietary supplements can be purchased without prescription. Therefore, there is a scope of overuse and that can go unnoticed.