In its analysis of the Russian pharmaceutical market in 2005, market research organisation DSM Group tracked sales of nutritional supplements sold through pharmacies.
In value terms, pharmacy sales almost doubled compared to 2004, from US$127m to $249m. By volume, the increase was still impressive but not quite so dramatic: 103m to 169m packs.
While pack prices increased, this is not due to increasing numbers of foreign or premium domestic products on the market. In fact, the price increase was only a little over the inflation rate for 2005 (around 11 per cent).
2005 also saw a big influx of products to the market, with the number of trade names more than doubling from 2,500 to over 5,000. Foreign brands make up only a third of the supplements range on the market.
Two domestics manufacturers dominate the top 20 brand names - Diod and Evalar, with five products each.
Pharmacy sales are a good monitor for the overall market. Most consumers buy their supplements from pharmacies as they have greater confidence in the source, said DSM Group.
Products sold only over the internet or through TV-shops are regarded as low-quality and may be non-certified.
"In order to increase consumer confidence and enhance quality and efficacy for nutritional supplements, their manufacturing and research should be supported at State level," said the researchers.
The Federal Registry of Nutritional Supplements classifies nutritional supplements into 15 sections, the most popular of which, accounting for 29.36 percent of pharmacy sales, is 'Nutritional supplements mainly affecting tissue metabolism'.
While this may be an indication of supplement trends in the country, DSM Group said that there is presently something "provisional and ambiguous" about the classification system.
Despite this, the market has come a long way since nutritional supplements first started appearing in the 1980s. At that time, consumers showed cautious interest.
Now, it seems, their suspicion has been replace by conscious choice: "Nutritional supplements are part of a common lifestyle, and are developing actively."
The potential in supplements has not gone unnoticed by pharmaceutical companies, who are eyeing the market's superior potential to drug products. The domestic pharmaceutical market, while showing unprecedented growth of 35 percent in 2005, was still outstripped by supplements.
As well as registering or re-registration of over-the-counter drugs as nutritional supplements, they are observed to be stirring sales through advertisements, promotion of a combined approach to disease therapy.
The growing popularity of nutritional supplements could be good news for the health of Russia as a whole. In December the World Bank issued a stark warning that Russians should cut alcohol intake and smoking and improve their diet if they are to reverse the drastically declining population and keep up economic growth.
Russia's population has dropped by about 6 million to 143 million since 1993 and is currently losing around 750,000 people a year. The decline is thought to be a result of both a drop in the birth rate and high rates of early death among men, often caused by excessive drinking.
Russia also has a high mortality rate from chronic disease like cancer and heart disease - three times that of Germany.
However, the indications are that a high proportion of supplement take-up is by city dwellers with a higher disposable income. DSM Group noted that 26 percent of pharmacy supplement sales in 2005 were in Moscow and St Petersburg, where consumer trends cannot be extrapolated to apply to the far poorer rural areas.