Despite sweeping new changes to Amazon’s dietary supplements seller policy, and despite NOW’s discovery of substantial quality and potency problems in S-adenosylmethionine (SAM-e) products sold on Amazon in 2020, the same group of SAM-e supplements being sold on Amazon are still plagued with quality and labeling failings, according to follow-up testing by NOW.
 
As always, the company reports that it has openly shared its results with Amazon and FDA, hoping that they will take action to stop these practices.
 
NOW conducted a survey of suspicious SAM-e products purchased on Amazon in March 2020 and found that all 11 products tested to be low potency. Two of the brands at that time contained none of the listed ingredient.
 
NOW chose to investigate SAM-e for a second time because the product is expensive and brands appear to target costly products for intentional economic adulteration. In the second round of SAM-e testing, NOW gathered a new round of samples from more brands, while also checking to see if any brands from the first round corrected false labeling claims.
 
NOW purchased two bottles each of the 24 suspicious SAM-e supplements in October to test both internally and through third-party Eurofins labs. Some brands were chosen because they appeared to have excessively high potency claims, and sought out gummy format products, because SAM-e is unstable and can degrade quickly in moisture and heat.
 
As a result of SAM-e being unstable, it is often enteric-coated. Gnosis by Lesaffre also makes a proprietary SAM-e ingredient from disulfate tosylate salt, which doesn’t need enteric coating, but 800 mg of this salt is required to produce 400 mg SAM-e. Some brands disclosed this on the label, while others didn’t – while it’s not required, it helps consumers understand what is in the product.
 
Testing Results
 
Five repeat low-potency brands continue to be widely sold on Amazon. Nearly half (48%) of failing samples came from Florida-based brands with matching or near-identical lot numbers. All samples were tested by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) using a validated method based on the USP monograph for SAM-e.
 
Twenty of the 23 samples failed potency testing, and 16 of the remaining 23 brands contained less than 20% of labeled potency. Six brands contained zero SAM-e, including both of the gummy products.
 
The five brands that failed testing in 2020 (highlighted yellow) failed again with one containing zero potency and three containing less than 20% of the SAM-e claimed on the label. The repeated failing brands were aSquared, Healthy Way, Mono Herbs, Nasa B’Ahava, and Superior Health. Mono Herbs tested at zero potency for the second time in four years. NOW has tested 13 different product lots by aSquared, and every single product tested failed potency testing.
 
Ojos Labs and Shevat Vitamins are located in florida, and their samples shared the same lot number, so they were both likely made by the same manufacturer. Each contained less than 10% potency.
 
The Natures Craft and Phytoral brands also had nearly identical lot numbers, and tested slightly below full potency.
 
Spliferkou made an impossible potency claim that a 1,000 mg capsule could contain 3,000 mg of SAM-e, and its product contained zero SAM-e.
 
Florida Herbal Pharmacy, which failed with zero potency, also claimed that its capsules were vegetarian but they were tested to contain animal gelatin.