Taking a daily multivitamin may protect against memory loss in older adults, according to a trio of studies involving more than 5,000 participants.
The research was part of the COSMOS trial, a much larger clinical trial that investigated whether a daily multivitamin (in this case, Centrum Silver), a cocoa extract supplement, or both could protect against heart disease and cancer.
The results of the third and final study were published Thursday in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The researchers assessed their cognitive function in person and with a series of tests at the beginning and end of the study.
Mars Inc., a candy and snack company, partially funded the larger COSMOS study.
The three studies strongly showed that taking a multivitamin daily may have a modest effect on preventing the normal memory loss that comes with aging, said Vyas, who led the third study.
In a meta-analysis of all three, researchers concluded that a daily multivitamin benefits both global cognition — things like reasoning, attention and planning — and the ability to recall memories from everyday life in healthy older adults.
“Future studies are necessary to identify the specific micronutrients that contribute most to cognitive benefits,” Vyas said. More research that includes more racial and ethnic diversity is also needed, he said, because most of the participants were white.
The idea that vitamins alone could protect cognitive function in older adults is plausible, but there are some limitations based on relatively short studies, said Dr. Richard Caselli, professor emeritus of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.
“I still maintain a little bit of skepticism about the magnitude of the impact,” he said. “I doubt the difference would really be that big.
Dr. Zaldy Tan, MD, a geriatric medicine physician at the Cedars Sinai Jona Goldrich Center for Alzheimer’s and Memory Disorders in Los Angeles, said it’s very likely that some patients will benefit more than others.
