Infographic: Dietary supplements for smart prevention

Related tags Age-related macular degeneration Medicine

Dietary supplement regimens may save hundreds of millions of dollars – and in some cases billions – of healthcare savings by reducing the number of disease-associated medical events, says a new report, but what do those numbers look like?

In the U.S., 75% of health care dollars go to the treatment of chronic disease, with only 3% spent on prevention, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As reported by NutraIngredients-USA, a new report from Frost & Sullivan and commissioned by the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) Foundation found that supplements of calcium plus vitamin D in US women with osteoporosis has the potential to offer $1.08 bn in savings per year.

Lutein & zeaxanthin for age-related eye diseases, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and cataracts, were reported to reduce the risk of these diseases by 23%, which would offer potential savings of $930 million, accounting for supplement costs and current supplement use (4%).

Coronary heart disease (CHD) currently costs the US $77.9bn, but supplements of omega-3s could offer a relative risk reduction of 6.9%, and overall net potential savings of $930 million. This would work out at $3.88 billion in cumulative health care cost savings from 2013 to 2020.

The report has a lot of numbers in it, and to help picture the implications, the CRN Foundation has created the following infographic: