"There's a watershed time for a good nutraceutical," says Dr. Joseph Maroon, a University of Pittsburgh neurosurgeon, author of a book titled "The Longevity Factor" and co-founder of a company, Xenomis, which rolled out a line of resveratrol-based supplements last May.
Resveratrol, in short, stands at the juncture of hope, profit and scientific promise -- a social phenomenon galloping ahead of research that is undeniably intriguing but very incomplete. It is a formula for the age-old warning: caveat emptor, or buyer beware.
Compared to the markets for many other dietary supplements -- Omega-3, CoQ10, Vitamin D and calcium -- the market for resveratrol supplements is tiny. James Betz, managing director and founder of Biotivia, one of the leading suppliers of resveratrol products, estimates that the worldwide market for resveratrol supplements may stand at just $20 million per year -- making it a modest newcomer on the dietary supplements block.
"But our sales are ticking up rather dramatically now," Betz says. The market for resveratrol "does have an almost logarithmic rate of growth at this point," he adds. "I think it could become as popular as, let's say, multivitamins."
The supplements themselves sell on the Internet and in stores for prices that range from about $15 to close to $150 per bottle (typically a one- or two-month supply, since dosage recommendations vary widely).
To bring resveratrol cheaply to a growing market, supplement makers have taken to extracting the plant compound not from grapes or wine but from an exotic weed -- Polygonum cuspidatum, or Japanese knotweed. They are mixing it with a wide variety of other dietary supplements (including the antioxidant acai, which also has taken the supplements world by storm), concentrating it in mega-doses, micronizing it "for optimum absorption" and capturing it in a pill, capsule, powder and even a topical cream.
Among its many commercial manifestations, resveratrol is sold as Trans-Max, Nitro-250, Vindure, Sustain-Alpha, Resveratrol-Forte and Resveratin. Supplements may contain as little as 25 milligrams and as much as 1 gram of resveratrol per dose.
A question of dose
The flurry of commercial activity has taken off despite the fact that researchers don't even know exactly what resveratrol does.
Betz and others vying for a share of that market say there is no need to wait until a welter of slow-moving clinical trials has established resveratrol's life-extending powers in humans, not to mention its safety, to encourage the use of large doses.
