Several dietary supplements touted as weight-loss or body sculpting aids have been pulled from the shelves of exchange and GNC stores on military installations.
Supplements containing a compound known as DMBA, or 1,3-dimethylbutylamine, also marketed as AMP Citrate or 4-amino-2-methylpentane citrate, were removed earlier this month following the release of a study that said the synthetic stimulant has not been tested on humans.
An Army and Air Force Exchange Service spokesman said AAFES stores pulled the weight-loss supplement MD2 Meltdown from shelves Oct. 14, while the Marine Corps Exchange removed the same product the following day, according to the Corps.
GNC stores on Army, Air Force and Marine Corps bases also pulled OxyTHERMPro and RedLine White Heat, exchange officials said.
Navy exchanges did not carry any of the 12 products named in the report, published online Oct. 8 in Drug Testing and Analysis.
According to the study, conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School, the Netherlands Health Protection Center and NSF International, DMBA is closely related to the banned stimulant 1,3-dimethylamylamine, DMAA, and has not undergone rigorous scientific testing.
The researchers found that the products tested contained dosages of DMBA ranging from 13mg to 120mg per serving.
"Given the potential health risks of untested pharmacologic stimulants, we strongly recommend that manufacturers immediately recall all DMBA-containing supplements," the researchers wrote.
Representatives of the companies that market several of the products in the study refuted the findings. Marc Ullman, an attorney for Driven Sports, said after the report was released that the research makes several false claims that call into question its scientific rigor.
Driven Sports attorneys have sent a libel letter to the researchers demanding they remove Frenzy — its product named in the report — from the study and issue an apology for including the supplement, which Driven Sports says is not available for sale in the U.S.
VPX, marketers of Redline White Heat and MD2 Meltdown, also published an open letter on their website attacking the report as "fear mongering and fact twisting."
The company said DMBA is a naturally occurring substance found in Pouchung tea and is "100 percent ... legal."
Theresearchers who worked on the study said they found no evidence, other than a small Chinese study, that DMBA can be extracted from tea — and that if that study were true, manufacturers would still need 2,200 pounds of tea to extract 12mg of DMBA.
The removal of the products from military store shelves marks the third time in nearly three years that fitness supplements have been dropped by military retailers out of concern for safety.
The stores removed supplements containing the stimulant DMAA, or 1,3-dimethylamylamine, after it was implicated in the deaths of at least two soldiers.
The families of the two troops, Pvt. Michael Sparling and Sgt. Demekia Cola, have filed lawsuits against GNC and USPlabs, the manufacturer of Jack3d and other products containing DMAA, and are awaiting trial.
Army research into DMAA products concluded there was insufficient evidence to prove the ingredient caused the soldiers' deaths, but a Pentagon safety panel nonetheless decided that DMAA posed enough of a health risk that it should not be sold on base.
The Food and Drug Administration later banned products containing DMAA.
The FDA has made no announcements regarding any restrictions on products containing DMBA.
FDA spokeswoman Jennifer Corbett Dooren said her agency is aware of the recent report and "will consider taking regulatory action as appropriate to protect consumers."
"We take this matter seriously and are considering the next steps," she said.
Dr. Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and report co-author, said the FDA is not doing enough to protect consumers.
"These are the kind of drugs people would have to go out and find for 'legal highs,' such as bath salts. In the past, these kind of designer stimulants were used by people who knew they were experimenting with their health, but now we are seeing them in mainstream supplements," Cohen said.
