Problems caused by the use of dietary supplements result in more than 20,000 emergency room visits a year, a new study finds.

In addition, the federal study also found that many of these were young people who experienced problems stemming from the use of a product marketed for weight loss or exercise enhancement, according to the report, which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Still, the study showed that problems with supplements make up only a fraction – one thirtieth – of emergency room visits made by people suffering adverse reactions due to prescription drugs, an earlier study found.

More than 700,000 people, most of them older Americans, end up in emergency rooms annually due adverse drug reactions, according to this study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The supplements study is the first to document the extent of severe injuries and hospitalization tied to the use of $32 billion dietary supplement business, which is coming under increased scrutiny, according to the report in the New York Times.

Federal researchers tracked emergency room visits at a large network of hospitals around the country over a 10-year period and then analyzed those in which a dietary supplement was implicated.

The study found that more than a quarter of the emergency room visits occurred among people ages 20 to 34, and half of these cases were caused by a supplement that was marketed for weight loss or energy enhancement, commonly producing symptoms like chest pain, heart palpitations and irregular heart rhythms.

Critics of the supplement industry have called for stiffer regulations, but industry representatives noted that the products were used by roughly half of all Americans and that the study showed only a tiny fraction sustained major injuries, the New York Times report said.