Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) Resources

As more and more patients choose to use CAM, health professionals must be able to discuss the efficacy of the products with patients. The following resources are available.

AEProbio: Alliance for Education on Probiotics
A Practice Tool to Assist with Clinical Decision Making for Appropriate Probiotic Therapy for Your Patients. - from the website
ConsumerLab.com
ConsumerLab.com provides comprehensive information about vitamin, herbal and other supplements, and nutritional products. Includes ConsumerLab.com's independent product evaluations, test results for ConsumerLab.com selected products and Approved Products from ConsumerLab.com’s Quality Certification Program, information on categories not covered by ConsumerLab.com’s testing in its CL Answers section, product recalls, and safety warnings.
FTC Dietary Supplements Consumer Information
Provided by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), this resource provides information about dietary supplements for consumers.
MedlinePlus
This patient-friendly tool includes a Herbs and Supplements page that links to reliable resources on a variety of CAM therapies.

Micromedex
Micromedex provides referenced information about drugs, toxicology, diseases, acute care, and alternative medicine. Also access IBM CareNotes which includes patient education handouts, conditions, and diagnoses.

National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)
This resource includes the results of research and clinical trials focused on CAM therapies; includes resources for consumer and health care professionals.

Natural Medicines
Natural Medicines was founded by healthcare providers and researchers to provide high-quality, evidence-based information about complementary and alternative therapies.

NIH Office of Dietary Supplements
This government office has many fact sheets on herb and supplement products. In addition they generate reports of supplements of interest or concern. A mobile app is available called My Dietary Supplements and numerous links take users to sources of additional information.
PubMed
PubMed has two "special queries" for CAM topics: (1) Complementary Medicine and (2) Dietary Supplements. Searchers may also use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) include “Complementary Therapies” and “Plants, Medicinal.” These searches can be combined with specific CAM therapy topics.