Pangamic acid has been sold as a dietary supplement in the United States at least since the late 1970s, when the lay press celebrated its benefits (Colman et al., 1980). This is not the same as the pangamic acid isolated by Krebs and associates in 1951, which was studied in the treatment of cardiovascular disease in the 1950s and is structurally distinct from dimethylglycine (Kemp, 1959). One pangamic acid formulation that contains dimethylglycine is the “Russian formula,” which was patented in 1975 and contains 61.5% calcium gluconate and 38.5% dimethylglycine (Gray and Titlow, 1982a). Pangamic acid is not an identifiable substance because of the variety of products that have been marketed as such. It is found in some but not all formulations of pangamic acid (vitamin B15).
Dimethylglycine was discovered in 1943 (Tonda and Hart, 1992).
