Awareness And Practices Towards Nutraceuticals Among Medical Practitioners of A Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in South India - A Pilot Study

Abstract

'Nutraceuticals' refer to food or parts of foods that provide medical or health benefits including prevention and treatment of disease. Nutraceuticals are increasingly being prescribed in day to day practice. There is a dearth of studies outlining the use and prescription of nutraceuticals in the Indian population. This pilot study aims at assessing the knowledge, attitude and practices among registered medical practitioners at a tertiary care teaching hospital in South India. A self structured, questionnaire based pilot study was conducted among medical practitioners. After obtaining informed consent, participants were asked to complete the questionnaire and information provided was analysed using Graphpad Prism Version 6.0. All data were expressed as percentages. 50 questionnaires were completed and returned by the approached registered medical practitioners. 76% of the study participants were aware of the term nutraceuticals. The percentage of respondants who said that nutraceuticals should be sold only on prescription of registered medical practitioners are 78%. Among all the respondents 54% of them prescribe nutraceuticals in their daily practice. Nutraceuticals are increasingly being prescribed by medical practitioners but there is need for further study to analyse the attitude and practices towards them.