FTC Approves Final Settlement Orders with Supplement Marketers

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) recently announced a final order has been approved settling charges against two marketers of dietary supplements. The agency’s complaint against i-Health, Inc. and Martek Biosciences accused the companies of making deceptive claims when advertising their BrainStrong Adult dietary supplement. The marketers claimed the product, omega-3 DHA-based supplement, would improve adult memory and prevent cognitive decline without the clinical testing to prove that the claims were true. The FTC said that the claims the product improved memory was unsubstantiated. The marketers conducted a double-blind, random-controlled trial (“RCT”), which is considered to be the “gold standard” in establishing health claims. The MIDAS study (the Memory Improvement with Docosahexaenoic Acid Study) used to support the claims was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel, multi-center, six-month, peer-reviewed, journal-published study of 485 subjects. According to the FTC, it did not show that BrainStrong Adult improved memory, and therefore was deceptive. Since the FTC differentiates between types of “memory” and “cognition,” the clinical trial evidence presented was found to be insufficient because it did not support an improvement in all different variations of memory and cognition, even though participants who consumed 900 mg of DHA daily experienced certain memory related improvements.