One third of U.S. adults use complementary and alternative medicines

The continued widespread use of individual and multiple CAM therapies underscores the need to rigorously evaluate the safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of these approaches, according to the study’s lead author Hilary Tindle, Harvard Medical School (HMS) research fellow, and co-author David Eisenberg, director of the Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies and the Osher Institute at HMS. The study results appeared in the January/February 2005 issue of the medical journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. The study compared results of the National Health Interview Survey in 2002 and a survey conducted by researchers at HMS (Eisenberg et al.) in 1997. The two surveys were similar but not identical. Prior to this study, there had been no head-to-head comparison using a common definition of CAM. The largest change was a 50 percent jump in the use of herbal supplements, growing over the five years from 12.1 percent of adults reporting usage in 1997 to 18.6 percent — or 38 million adults — in 2002. The practice of yoga increased 40 percent over the same period, growing from 3.7 percent in 1997 to 5.1 percent– over 10 million adults- – in 2002. This work was made possible in part by grants from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and by private foundation grants.