Summary: A new study suggests daily multivitamin supplementation could improve memory among older adults. The study tested the impact of multivitamins on cognitive function. Compared to a placebo group, participants taking daily multivitamins showed significantly better memory performance over a three-year period.
The results confirm earlier findings from the COSMOS-Mind trial, presenting multivitamins as a promising intervention for slowing cognitive decline.
Key Facts:
- The COSMOS-Web trial tested the impact of daily multivitamin supplementation on memory among over 3,500 participants aged 60 and above.
- Participants taking multivitamins significantly outperformed the placebo group in memory tests over a three-year period, showing an improvement equivalent to 3.1 years.
- The study results complement earlier findings from COSMOS-Mind, which suggested that daily multivitamin supplementation could slow global cognitive aging.
Source: Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Few effective strategies have been shown in randomized clinical trials to improve memory or slow cognitive decline among older adults.
Nutritional interventions may play an important role because the brain requires several nutrients for optimal health, and deficiencies in one or more of these nutrients may accelerate cognitive decline.
The COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS), a large-scale nation-wide randomized trial directed by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), a founding member of Mass General Brigham, included two separate clinical trials (COSMOS-Web and COSMOS-Mind) testing multivitamin supplementation on changes in cognitive function.
In a study published today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers from the Brigham and their collaborators at Columbia University report from COSMOS-Web that daily multivitamin supplements, compared to placebo, improved memory among participants.
The study is the second from COSMOS, along with the previously published COSMOS-Mind, to find an improvement in memory function among those taking a multivitamin.
“The findings that a daily multivitamin improved memory and slowed cognitive decline in two separate studies in the COSMOS randomized trial is remarkable, suggesting that multivitamin supplementation holds promise as a safe, accessible and affordable approach to protecting cognitive health in older adults,” said co-author JoAnn Manson, MD, chief of the Brigham’s Division of Preventive Medicine. Manson is a co-leader of the parent COSMOS trial with Howard Sesso, ScD, associate director of the Brigham’s Division of Preventive Medicine.
Sesso adds, “With these two studies on cognition in hand for COSMOS, and more to come in COSMOS, it is critical to understand how a daily multivitamin may protect against memory loss and cognitive decline, and whether particular subgroups based on nutritional status or other factors may benefit more, or less.”
The newly published COSMOS-Web trial included more than 3,500 participants aged 60 and older who completed novel web-based assessments of memory and cognition annually over 3 years.
Compared to the placebo group, participants randomized to multivitamin supplementation did significantly better on the memory tests at the prespecified primary time point of 1 year, with benefits sustained across the 3 years of follow-up.
The researchers estimated that the multivitamin intervention improved memory performance by the equivalent of 3.1 years compared to the placebo group.
Intriguingly, both COSMOS cognitive studies also showed that the participants who benefitted the most may be those with a history of cardiovascular disease.
“Because of our innovative approach of assessing cognitive outcomes using internet-based tests, we were able to examine the effects of a multivitamin in thousands of study participants.
“The findings are promising and certainly set the stage for important follow-up studies about the impact of multivitamin supplementation on cognition,” said Adam Brickman, PhD, who co-led the COSMOS-Web study with Lok-Kin Yeung, PhD, at Columbia University.
“Most older adults are worried about memory changes that occur with aging. Our study suggests that supplementation with multivitamins may be a simple and inexpensive way for older adults to slow down memory loss,” added Yeung.
Results from COSMOS-Web, conducted as a collaboration between the Brigham and Columbia University, provide confirmation of earlier findings from COSMOS-Mind linking daily multivitamins to slowing of cognitive decline.
COSMOS-Mind, which was conducted as a collaboration between the Brigham and Wake Forest School of Medicine, had tested 2,200 older adults for 3 years and showed that randomized assignment to a daily multivitamin supplement was associated with a 60% slowing of global cognitive aging compared to placebo, equivalent to 1.8 years reduction in cognitive decline (study was funded by the National Institute on Aging and published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia in September 2022).
The authors note that the COSMOS-Web study provides evidence that multivitamin supplementation has cognitive benefits but further research will be necessary to identify the specific nutrients contributing the most to this benefit and the underlying mechanisms involved.
Additional research is also needed to determine whether the findings are generalizable to a more diverse study population with lower educational levels and lower socioeconomic status.
Disclosures: Sesso additionally reported receiving investigator-initiated grants from Pure Encapsulations and Pfizer Inc. and honoraria and/or travel for lectures from the Council for Responsible Nutrition, BASF, NIH, and the American Society of Nutrition during the conduct of the study.
Funding: COSMOS-Web was supported by investigator-initiated grants from Mars Edge, a segment of Mars Inc. and the National Institutes of Health (AG050657, AG071611, EY025623, and HL157665). Multivitamin and placebo tablets and packaging were donated by Pfizer, Inc Consumer Healthcare (now Haleon).
About this aging and memory research news
Author: Serena Bronda
Source: Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Contact: Serena Bronda – Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
“Multivitamin supplementation improves memory in older adults: A randomized clinical trial” by JoAnn Manson et al. Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Abstract
Multivitamin supplementation improves memory in older adults: A randomized clinical trial
Background
Maintenance of cognitive abilities is of critical importance to older adults, yet only a few effective strategies to slow down the cognitive decline currently exist. Multivitamin supplementation is used to promote general health; however, it is unclear whether it favorably affects cognition in older age.
Objectives
To examine the effect of daily multivitamin/multimineral supplementation on memory in older adults.
Methods
The Cocoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study Web (COSMOS-Web) ancillary study (NCT04582617) included 3562 older adults. Participants were randomly assigned to a daily multivitamin supplement (Centrum Silver) or placebo and evaluated annually with an Internet-based battery of neuropsychological tests for 3 y. The prespecified primary outcome measure was change in episodic memory, operationally defined as immediate recall performance on the ModRey test, after 1 y of intervention. Secondary outcome measures included changes in episodic memory over 3 y of follow-up and changes in performance on neuropsychological tasks of novel object recognition and executive function over 3 y.
Results
Compared with placebo, participants randomly assigned to multivitamin supplementation had significantly better ModRey immediate recall at 1 y, the primary endpoint (t(5889) = 2.25, P = 0.025), as well as across the 3 y of follow-up on average (t(5889) = 2.54, P = 0.011). Multivitamin supplementation had no significant effects on secondary outcomes. Based on cross-sectional analysis of the association between age and performance on the ModRey, we estimated that the effect of the multivitamin intervention improved memory performance above placebo by the equivalent of 3.1 y of age-related memory change.
Conclusions
Daily multivitamin supplementation, compared with placebo, improves memory. Multivitamin supplementation holds promise as a safe and accessible approach to maintaining cognitive health in older age.
This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT04582617.
