Proponents claim that this hot new over-the-counter dietary supplement can ease depression, restore arthritic joints and combat chronic liver disease. Here's what we know about it—and what we don't.
By Geoffrey Cowley and Anne Underwood
She was making lunch for herself and a friend one Saturday this spring when an unfamiliar feeling swept over her. The 50-year-old social worker had fallen deep into depression two years earlier, and had given up on prescription antidepressants when the first one she tried left her sluggish, sexually dormant and numb to her own emotions. Then, in mid-March, she heard about a naturally occurring substance called SAMe (pronounced "Sammy"). She had been taking it for just a few days when she began setting the table that Saturday morning. A ginger-miso sauce was chilling in the fridge, and she was garnishing her finest plates with fresh anemones. Suddenly, there it was: a sense of undiluted pleasure.
This woman (who asked not to be named) has taken SAMe ever since, and her mood isn't the only thing that has changed. Until this spring she took prescription-strength anti-inflammatories for her arthritis, and still had trouble bending her knees. She's now off those drugs—and feeling more nimble than she has in 20 years.
Could an over-the-counter tonic really do all this? Pills purporting to cure everything from hemorrhoids to hangnails are usually worthless and sometimes dangerous. And because SAMe has not been studied extensively in the United States, many doctors are leery. Beware, says Dr. Gilbert Ross of the American Council on Science and Health, a conservative watchdog group. Supplement dealers are once again trying to "flimflam the public into using untested remedies instead of FDA-approved pharmaceuticals."
The Food and Drug Administration has not rigorously evaluated SAMe, let alone approved it. (Federal law permits the unregulated sale of naturally occurring substances as long as marketers avoid therapeutic claims.) And the studies that researchers have conducted are not of the magnitude the FDA would require for a drug approval. But that doesn't mean SAMe is "untested." In dozens of European trials involving thousands of patients, it has performed as well as traditional treatments for arthritis and major depression. Research suggests it can also ease normally intractable liver conditions. SAMe doesn't seem to cause adverse effects, even at high doses. And doctors have prescribed it successfully for two decades in the 14 countries where it has been approved as a drug.
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