Multivitamin supplements may help delay the normal age-related forgetfulness, researchers reported Wednesday.
A report published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition analyzed data from more than 3,500 older participants and found that those who took Centrum Silver daily for three years were better than placebo treatment. It has been shown to have a better memory than its recipients.
The effects seen in the study were “very encouraging,” said study co-author Adam Brickman, professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University Bagueros College of Physicians and Surgeons.
“Cognitive changes and memory loss are the biggest health concerns for older people,” he says. “And there aren’t many strategies for mitigating age-related changes, so it’s encouraging that supplements can address one of the major health concerns older people have.”
To investigate whether daily multivitamins benefit cognitive function, researchers Studies on the effects of cocoa supplements and multivitamins (COSMOS) is a multi-year study that enrolled 21,442 older men and women and investigated the effects of cocoa supplements and multivitamins on cognitive function and risk of cancer and cardiovascular events.
Hareon, formerly known as Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, manufactured Centrum Silver and provided vitamins used in clinical trials. Mars Edge, part of Mars’ candy and snack makers, partially funded the study with the National Institutes of Health. Neither company was involved in designing the trial or inputting the findings.
In the new study, Brickman and colleagues followed a subset of 3,562 people from a large trial who were randomly assigned to receive multivitamins or placebo.
The researchers used a new web-based test to assess participants’ memory at the beginning of the study, one year later, and three years later.
Compared to a placebo group, men and women who took a daily multivitamin performed significantly better on a memory test that assesses their ability to quickly recall a list of words after reading them, a study found. bottom.
The researchers estimated that the multivitamin intervention improved memory by 3.1 years compared to placebo.
This is the second large study to find cognitive benefits from taking multivitamins. Last year, another study, COSMOS-Mind, found that daily multivitamin intake was associated with a 60% delay in cognitive aging globally. Data from a subset of COSMOS participants were also used in this study.
It’s not uncommon for researchers to be unable to replicate the results of “large, flashy studies,” Brickman said. “We clearly replicate the effects of multivitamins on cognition, which adds to our confidence in the data.”
Researchers do not yet know which components of multivitamins, including vitamin A, vitamin C, B vitamins, and zinc, cause cognitive effects. “It’s important to understand this,” says study co-author Howard Sesso, an epidemiologist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
It is also unclear whether these results are seen with other brands of multivitamins.
“This particular brand was chosen because it is commonly used in the United States and has an excellent quality and safety record,” said Sesso, who is also a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Stated. “In addition, we tested very similar Centrum silver formulations,” in a previous study called Doctor’s Health Survey II, He said. That study found no cognitive benefits from taking multivitamins.
Researchers have yet to study to determine if other types of multivitamins work similarly or if their benefits are specific to a particular formulation.
The effects the researchers observed were relatively small, so it’s possible that individuals might not notice the improvement, even though they see it in the larger data sets, said Dr. Paul Newhouse, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Cognitive Medicine. . new research.
Notably, “neither group showed cognitive decline,” he said. “Rather, we see how much one group has improved in his three years.”
Although the effect is small, multivitamins combined with other lifestyle modifications (such as exercise and following a Mediterranean diet) that have already been shown to reduce the risk of cognitive decline may have a greater effect. He said it has potential.
Newhouse does not recommend that doctors prescribe multivitamins to patients to prevent cognitive decline.
“Longer studies are needed,” he said. “However, this study suggests that multivitamin supplementation may be potentially beneficial rather than harmful.”
And because the participants graduated or attended college, the results may not be the same as those in other groups, said Liddy, a researcher at the Alzheimer’s Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Patira said.
Nor are they typical of the patients she sees who are already experiencing cognitive decline.
“These are normal people who can take tests online,” Patira said. “They are highly motivated people.”
When patients ask her to make lifestyle changes to prevent cognitive decline, she suggests a healthy diet.
Patira, who was not involved in the new study, feels the follow-up has not been long enough to suggest multivitamins for cognitive enhancement.
In healthy people with normal cognition, the decline “progresses so slowly that it’s hard to detect anything meaningful after a year,” he said, and differences may be undetectable for five to 20 years. I added that it is possible.
