ASSESSMENT OF KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICES ABOUT NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS OF THE STAFF AND STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITI KUALA LUMPUR - ROYAL COLLEGE OF MEDICINE PERAK MALAYSIA

BACKGROUND The rate of usage of nutritional supplement has increased tremendously over the past decades. In Malaysia, the dietary supplement market is about US $17.30/month. AIM The aim of this study was to determine the association of knowledge, attitude and practice about nutritional supplements with socio-demographic factors of the respondents. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study, conducted in 2015 at UniKL-RCMP, Malaysia. Convenient sampling was used. The data extracted from the questionnaires, entered into the Microsoft Excel and were analysed by using the SPSS version 17. RESULTS Only 43.1% respondents were graded as good knowledge level on nutritional supplement, while the majority (56.9%) respondents had a poor knowledge level. The knowledge on nutritional supplement were attained by majority from friends/families, doctors/pharmacists, television, articles, newspaper, reading books, radio and journal. The majority of study respondents was having a good healthy lifestyle. Most of the staff and students were non-smokers (99%), non-alcoholic (98%), supplement users (50.8%) and do regular exercise (85.8%). The correlation between Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) of nutritional supplements with gender, occupation and marital status were statistically significant. CONCLUSION This study shows that majority of nutritional supplement users were female, and also demonstrated that the participants had poor knowledge regarding nutritional supplement especially regarding cost, adverse reactions and evidence-based health benefit.