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U.S. Department of Health & Human Services National Institutes of Health

Computer Access to Research on
Dietary Supplements (CARDS)

FAQ

CARDS stands for Computer Access to Research on Dietary Supplements. It is a database of federally funded research projects pertaining to dietary supplements

CARDS contains projects funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Institutes and Centers (ICs) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) starting with fiscal year 1999, the first year that Federal agencies began reporting research related to dietary supplements. Projects funded by other Federal agencies will be added to CARDS at a later date.
Enter your search criteria from the main CARDS search screen and click on the "Submit" button at the top of the screen. The CARDS search screen contains a number of search boxes allowing you to broaden or narrow your search as desired. You do not need to enter search criteria into every box.

For example, if you are looking for research projects pertaining to soy and breast cancer, click on the up and down arrows at the right of the Dietary Supplement or Ingredient box to find "Soy." Click on "Soy" to select it. In the Health Outcomes box, use the up and down arrows to find "Breast cancer" and click on it to select it as well. When you have finished making your selections, click on "Submit" at the top of the screen to enter your search. For additional information on searching CARDS, please view the Help Page.
Fiscal year 1999 was the first year Federal agencies began reporting research related to dietary supplements. Although dietary supplement research was funded in prior years, it was reported as part of other subject categories and was not specifically identified as dietary supplement related. As a result, CARDS will contain only information on research projects funded in 1999 and subsequent years.
CARDS currently contains only projects funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Institutes and Centers (ICs) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) starting with fiscal year 1999, the first year Federal agencies began reporting research related to dietary supplements. As a result, it is possible that there were very few or no projects that met your search criteria.

It is also possible that your search returned very few or no projects because you selected very specific search criteria. You can try widening your search by selecting broader search criteria. For example, if you are interested in human studies on herbs you may have selected "Herb" in the Dietary Supplement or Ingredient box and "Human Study - Clinical Trial" in the Type of Study box. You can widen your search by selecting the broader category of "Human Study (All)". This will likely return additional projects.
The CARDS database is designed to have both broad and specific search categories. This allows you to broaden or narrow your search as desired. For example, if you select "Vitamin" in the Dietary Supplement or Ingredient box, all projects pertaining to vitamins, including fat soluble and water soluble vitamins will be returned. However, if you select "Fat Soluble Vitamin", only projects pertaining to fat soluble vitamins will be returned.
Unfortunately, abstracts are not available for some research projects, particularly for many of the General Clinical Research Centers (GCRCs). GCRCs are specialized research centers that conduct patient-oriented research. They are usually located at academic medical institutions and have a highly trained research staff as well as inpatient, outpatient and laboratory facilities. GCRCs usually have many research components and are funded for numerous years. As a result, abstracts describing the current research activities are frequently not available.

We are working to obtain updated information for GCRCs and other projects in CARDS, and will add this information as it becomes available. In the meantime, you can get an indication of the nature of the research by viewing the CARDS codes assigned to the project. These are located on the project Detail Record screen in CARDS.
This simply indicates that the project was funded for multiple years. The results page lists projects for each year they are funded. So if a project is funded for both 1999 and 2000, you will see a listing for both years. If you search on just one fiscal year, you will not see multiple listings on the results page.
There are several reasons why this may occur:
  • In most cases, it takes several years for publications to be completed after a project is funded. Therefore, projects funded within the last few years may not have any publications at this time. If you search for older projects or projects funded for multiple years, you are more likely to retrieve related publications.
  • Some projects are not likely to directly result in publications. For example, projects with an activity code beginning with an F or T are fellowship or training grants and may not have any related publications.
  • Some publications may not contain complete project funding information. In these cases, the publication may not be identified as being related to a given project.
  • Although PubMed/MEDLINE contains bibliographic citations from more than 4,800 biomedical journals published in the United States and 70 other countries, publications from some journals may not be indexed by PubMed/MEDLINE.
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