Supplement company NOW, in its most recent round of testing products from lesser-known brands on Amazon, found serious quality failings among berberine prdoucts.
 
In its 16^th round of testing since 2017, NOW tested 33 Berberine supplements after surveying Amazon and Walmart for products which looked questionable. With berberine experiencing a rapid rise in popularity, there is the opportunity for deceptive sellers to cash in by offering inferior or adulterated products, NOW reported, and this appears to be happening on Amazon and Walmart’s online stores with berberine.
 
Berberine is a yellow alkaloid extracted from plants like barberry and Oregon grape roots. Supplements, including NOW’s, are made in hydrochloride (HCI) form, which is obtained from extracts of Berberis aristate bark. Berberine HCI dihydrate is typically used as the supplement source of berberine HCI and is between 85% and 95% pure. This means that if brands claim on a label that a product contains 500 mg of berberine, and it’s in the HCI form, there must be between 550-575 mg of berberine HCI dihydrate to meet the label claim.
 
Some brands claim “berberine” in the Supplement Facts panel for potency, while others list “berberine HCI.” While both are technically legal, labeling an ingredient as “Berberine HCI 500 mg (from 550 mg Berberine HCI Dihydrate)” would be fully disclosing the contents of a supplement to consumers.
 
We purchased two bottles of each product from 33 brands, including NOW, sold on both Amazon and Walmart.com,” said Dan Richard, NOW Health Group  VP of global sales and marketing. “It was obvious even before testing that many brands were fraudulently mislabeling potency on the front label panel and many others had suspiciously high claims.”
 
Products were tested with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultraviolet light detection (HPLC-UV). HPLC was also used to quantify the amount of berberine hydrochloride in tested products.
 
After the internal testing round, NOW also sent one unopened bottle of each brand to the contract laboratory Alkemist Labs to provide an independent report on the same products.
 
Testing details
 
All products selected by NOW were sold almost exclusively on Amazon and Walmart.com by lesser known brands, as the company’s experience shows that more well-known retail and healthcare practitioner brands are less of a concern.
 
There were serious levels of low potencies, and every brand besides NOW failed to meet 100% potency compared to label claim. Seven brands achieved over 80% potency, and three brands tested at 90-97% potency.
 
NOW has tested some of the same brands previously and similarly found problems. The aSquared brand, for instance, has failed eight rounds of product testing, and has the worst record among all brands tested by NOW.
 
18 of 33 brands tested contained less than 40% of labeled potency, and seven of the 33 tested samples had 1% or less of berberine potency. These seriously flawed brands were tested for the first time by NOW’s program, and may be new brands. These included Earth Bare, Greabby Gummies, GreenPeople Formula, KoNefancy, Satoomi, Vitamiscence, and Wellness Labs Rx.