FDA Approved Fish Oil Drug from GSK

Fish oil is a drug. I know, I know. Fish oil is a supplement right? Well now it is both. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has an FDA-approved prescription drug made from fish oil that is for lowering very high triglycerides. It is called Lovaza, and here is the website.

This just points out that any company can take any supplement ingredient, and if they successfully go throught the New Drug Approval process with FDA, they can sell it as a drug. Is that wrong? No. If you want to invest the money and time to do the research and get FDA's approval as a drug, you can. And if the supplement industry continues to struggle with quality issues, media issue, and ultimately consumer trust issues, this could be a very successful model for those ingredients that truly can demonstrate a drug benefit.

Note that on the website, GSK does take some swipes at the supplement industry, calling things like dosage, quality and efficacy into question. They also point out that fish oil supplements are not FDA approved to treat disease, but their fish oil drug is. For some, this is a strong message. We will keep an eye on this one, but I think it is safe to say that a lot of docs will be prescribing a lot of Lovaza. They get to offer the benefits of fish oil to their patients in a manner that they are very comfortable with. So what's the next supplement to jump across to the drug world?