As homeopathy sector retreats, even an industry giant is turning to dietary supplements instead
In recent years, countries that once financed the pseudotreatments, such as the United Kingdom and France, have stopped doing so, and Germany has plans to do the same this year
The last time the Spanish Instagram account of Boiron ―the world’s largest maker of homeopathic products― mentioned homeopathy in a post was on October 30, 2024. Since then, its messaging has focused on dietary supplements, intimate hygiene and eye drops. The decline of this pseudoscience in pharmacies began even earlier. According to data from the consultancy Iqvia provided to EL PAÍS, these products have accounted for 37.6% less of pharmacy sales since 2022: they have dropped from 3.6 million to 2.2 million units in four years.
Boiron has continued to report millions of euros in revenue. In 2018 the French multinational billed €604.2 million worldwide, a figure that fell to €501.1 million in 2025, a 17% decline according to the company’s own accounts.
Those figures reflect a drop in homeopathy sales virtually everywhere. In recent years, countries that once financed the pseudotreatments, such as the United Kingdom and France, have stopped doing so, and Germany has plans to do the same this year.
In Spain, the Ministry of Health published a report in April 2026 restating what the most rigorous scientific evidence has been saying for decades. It concludes that homeopathy “does not outperform placebo,” that there is no “scientific evidence” that it is an effective treatment, and that using it in place of other therapies can “endanger” patients’ health.
Homeopathy, invented more than 200 years ago, runs counter to almost everything that is known about biochemistry. It posits that like cures like, and that the more a substance is diluted, the more powerfully it acts on the body. Put into practical terms: if cutting an onion causes tearing, stinging and nasal discharge, an extremely diluted homeopathic onion preparation — Allium cepa — could be used to treat a cold or an allergy with those same symptoms. According to this logic, successive dilutions and shakings would imprint a supposed “memory” of the substance on the water, even when not a single detectable molecule of onion remains in the preparation.
Although it never cured anything, the slow demise of the discipline began in 2005, when an editorial in The Lancet titled The end of homeopathy proposed abandoning the waste of time and money trying to prove the effectiveness of a therapy that had failed to be effective in two centuries of history.
A skeptical movement led the fight against this pseudoscience in numerous countries, and homeopathy gradually waned in popularity.
Perhaps in response to this scenario, Boiron has stopped promoting these products on its social media in Spain and is focusing instead on dietary supplements, which follow a completely different trajectory and are experiencing a boom. The company declined to comment on the trend.
Some have been on the market for years; others are more recent additions. On its Instagram account the star product is a magnesium-and-vitamin supplement that supposedly helps combat fatigue. There are also eye drops, a vaginal gel (which, it should be noted, the company has been selling for more than 30 years) and a zinc-and-biotin supplement for hair loss.
Lately the French multinational has been betting on products for the microbiota, another rising niche. In 2021 it entered the probiotic market, driven, as it acknowledged in a statement, by high consumer awareness and satisfaction for this type of product. More recently, in 2025, it launched a line of fiber supplements intended to make up for low dietary intake of this important component.
Unlike homeopathic products, which generally lack any active ingredient (they are so diluted that it disappears) and which the law prevents from being marketed as curative, dietary supplements do contain substances that, under European regulations, may carry health claims.
Vicente Baos, a physician who served for years on the European Medicines Agency (EMA), says Boiron’s evolution is logical: “Its main niche [homeopathy] has fallen into oblivion and disrepute and it has to find others to generate profits quickly.”
“Developing real medicine is enormously expensive, slow and difficult,” Baos adds, noting that laboratories of all kinds are dedicating themselves to these types of products that are sold “under lax legislation” and whose manufacture is “cheap and undemanding.”
The doctor, a fierce critic of the supplement industry, is referring to European law, which allows a product that contains a certain substance that has been shown to contribute to a biological function to be marketed with that claim.
Many companies do so. One example: zinc is an essential mineral that directly contributes to maintaining hair in normal condition. Any compound to which zinc is added can claim to be good for hair, regardless of the amount and despite the fact that there are dozens of sources of zinc that are probably richer, cheaper and healthier.
The same happens with calcium, magnesium, iron and numerous vitamins. Some supplements have demonstrated certain health benefits, but generally they are very modest, at best.
Baos is blunt: “I don’t care if they’re bacteria or minerals. They have not shown they have a real impact on any disease. In the field of the microbiota there is an interesting development margin, but it is masked by ambiguous and general properties in the absence of a high level of evidence. The rest is marketing. We have a perfect combination for many people to believe that taking supplements is very good for their health, leaving aside what really matters: a good diet and exercise. It is the commodification of health prevention without evidence.”
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition