HealthDay - FRIDAY, July 18 (HealthDay News) -- It's one step forward, onestep back in the search for treatments against Alzheimer's disease.

Diabeticine has had to change its name to Diamaxol. Websites promoting the sales of Diabeticine have had to show FDA warnings that the claims made by the manufacturers of Diamaxol/Diabeticine are breaking the law by making medical claims for a product that is stevia dosages side effects reviews approved as a drug. So where are these clinical studies that the sites claim were done? Where were the results published? Is this a safe product?

FDA approved as a dietary supplement

Diamaxol/Diabeticine has been approved as a dietary supplement. That means that the FDA is reasonably sure that it can cause no harm. Further, any ingredients that have known daily limits (such as the chromium) are not in excess of safe doses. If you look at the ingredients, which are freely available for viewing in the internet, most all of them are generally regarded as safe by the FDA. The harm will be largely to your pocketbook, not your body, if you purchase and consume Diamaxol.

Safe Ingredients, but Effective in Diabetes Treatment?

Pubmed, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed , is the science geek's place to start searching for medical information on the internet. It's not the last stop, but usually the first. If you do a brief search in Pubmed for each ingredient +diabetes, you will see that many of the ingredients are indeed shown by research to be helpful at least in certain instances of diabetes treatment.

Banaba, Guggle (Guggul), Bitter Melon, Licorice extract, Cinnamon herb powder, Gymnema Sylvestre, Yarrow, Cayenne, Juniper Berries, Huckleberry, Vanadyl Sulfate, vitamin C, vitamin E (d-Alpha tocopheryl acetate), magnesium, biotin, zinc, manganese, and chromium picolinate can all be found in medical research. Many of the abstracts are linked to full text articles online, for those who enjoy reading up in scientific language what the latest theory is regarding each ingredient.

But they say there is clinical research, and the studies are available online!

Yes, there are two "clinical studies" available online. Neither list a journal in which they are published. Being published in a peer reviewed journal is part of the accepted procedure for proving your medical research. If you search Pubmed for "diabeticine" or "Diamaxol", you will no entries at all. These two "clinical studies" are only available on sites selling the product.

If you search the FDA site for clinical trials, http://clinicaltrials.gov , you will not find any entries for diabeticine or Diamaxol.

Who are the authors?

Google may not be the best place to find someone, or the only place to verify the identity of an author of a scientific clinical study, but for the first article, you will have a difficult time finding anyone with those names. Especially if you add -diabeticine to the search term. A PhD who has only ever published a paper that does not appear in any peer reviewed journal?

For the second article, you will actually find various scientists with name Andrew Stevenson, but I challenge any real Andrew Stevenson NMD MPH to put his place of employment on the article.

Go back to Pubmed and look at an article abstract. The places of employment of the researchers who published the work are always listed in an article. These two "clinical studies" do not list the places of employment (university, hospital, medical center) of any of the authors.

No clinical studies can just list "The study was conducted in an Out-Patient Department of Endocrinology." Any legitimate clinical study must list exactly the hospital, university, or other center where patients are recruited and samples are handled.

In other words, these "clinical studies" look, smell, and walk like fake ducks. They may have indeed been done somewhere, sometime, at some undisclosed place. However, at $75 - $90 per bottle of 60 capsules, you can probably do your own online reading research and purchase all the ingredients separately in a far more economical manner.

Samantha Rangen writes about home health issues. She has a BA in chemistry and has worked as a research technician for over 20 years in biochemistry, genetics, biochemistry, and cancer research. She enjoys reading medical research journal articles, especially when her friends ask her about popular medical topics.

Samantha markets discount home medical equipment, including insulin syringes at http://www.getinspec.com