The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health, is expanding its number of research centers by a third, adding programs to study such topics as the use of antioxidants from tomatoes, green tea and red grapes to treat or prevent diseases such as Alzheimer’s and pancreatic cancer.
Grants, which are expected to total about $20 million over five years, will fund three new centers at the University of California in Los Angeles, the Mount Sinai School of Public Medicine in New York and the University of South Carolina.
“We know from national surveys that at least 36 percent of Americans are using some form of complementary and alternative medicine.” NCCAM acting Director Dr. Ruth Kirschstein told The Examiner in an e-mail. “NCCAM is supporting rigorous research to determine what works, what doesn’t, and how these therapies might work. Ultimately, these results will help consumers and their health care providers make informed health care decisions.”
NCCAM has eight other centers, including one at the Kernan Hospital in Baltimore that focuses on studying the effect of Chinese medicine approaches such as acupuncture and herbal medicine on the treatment of arthritis.
NCCAM was created by Congress in 1999 to foster scientific research on alternative healing practices, and federal funding has grown from $50 million in the center’s initial year to $121 million for fiscal 2007. According to the most recent government research, the U.S. public spent about $40 billion on complementary and alternative medicine therapies in 1997, including $5 billion on herbal products.
