Taking a daily multivitamin may protect against memory loss in older adults, according to a trio of studies that included more than 5,000 participants.
Taken together, the three studies found that compared to a placebo, taking a daily multivitamin slowed cognitive aging by about two years, said Dr. Chirag Vyas, an instructor in investigation at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The research was part of the COSMOS trial, a much larger clinical trial that explored whether a daily multivitamin (in this case, Centrum Silver), a cocoa extract supplement or both could be protective against heart disease and cancer.
Results from the third and final study were published Thursday in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In it, 573 adults ages 60 and up took either a multivitamin or a placebo every day for two years. Researchers evaluated their cognitive function in person and with a series of tests at the beginning and the end of the study. The two earlier studies, which also compared a daily multivitamin to a placebo, used either phone- or web-based tests to measure cognitive function.
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Pfizer, the company that makes Centrum Silver, provided the multivitamins and the placebo pills used in the study. Mars Inc., the candy and snack company, partially funded the larger COSMOS trial. Neither company had any role in designing the trials.
The three studies reliably showed that taking a daily multivitamin can have a modest effect on preventing normal memory loss that comes with aging, said Vyas, who led the third study.
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