Driven Sports, a New York-based business, is part of litigation involving its Craze pre workout supplement. The company lists items like creatine, citrulline and caffeine in the supplement facts for Craze, but does not list N,α-dimethylphenethylamine, or N,α-DEPEA.
N,α-DEPEA has “a potency somewhere between methamphetamine and ephedrine, both of which are banned substances,” according to a lawsuit.
Craze’s inclusion of this compound was reported earlier in an article by NSF International, Harvard Medical School and the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands in the journal “Drug Testing and Analysis.”
The authors of the article call the compound a potentially dangerous. Regarding the report,
“Alarmingly we have found a drug in a mainstream sports supplement that has never been studied in humans,” says Dr. Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who has conducted extensive research on supplements. “The health risk of using supplements adulterated with a drug should not be underestimated.”
In separate testing, NSF International scientists also detected N,a-DEPEA in a different supplement called Detonate by Gaspari Nutrition. Regulators may want to consider taking action to warn consumers.
“We urge consumers to remain vigilant about the dietary supplement products they choose, especially since products including Craze and Detonate are available in stores and online, and encourage them to look for certification as a sign that the product has been tested and certified to be free of harmful levels of contaminants,” said Ed Wyszumiala, General Manager of NSF International’s Dietary Supplement Certification Program, which helps protect consumers by verifying what is on the dietary supplement label is in the package and that the product does not contain unsafe levels of contaminants.
This collaborative testing project was developed in response to several failed urine drug tests by professional athletes after taking an over-the-counter workout product called Craze marketed by Driven Sports, Inc. After extensive testing and a review of the product’s label at NSF International’s laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., scientists at NSF International, HMS and NIPHE confirmed that the substance N,N-diethylphenylethylamine was listed on the label but N,a-DEPEA, an emerging and potentially harmful designer stimulant, was found. A review of this substance shows that N,a-DEPEA is likely less potent than methamphetamine but greater than ephedrine.
http://www.nsf.com/newsroom/emerging-and-potentially-harmful-adulterant-depea-found-in-supplements/
