Leo Sher, M.D.

A research report, “Multivitamin supplementation improves memory in older adults: A randomized clinical trial” has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition online ahead of print (1). The authors of the study examined the effect of daily multivitamin/multimineral supplementation on memory in older adults.

The authors reported the results from the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study Web (COSMOS-Web) ancillary study, which was designed to examine the effects of dietary flavanol and multivitamin supplementation on hippocampus-mediated cognition in older adults after 1 year of intervention. The COSMOS-Web ancillary study 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 years. The prespecified primary outcome measure was a change in episodic memory, operationally defined as immediate recall performance on the ModRey test, after 1 year of intervention. Secondary outcome measures included changes in episodic memory over 3 years of follow-up and changes in performance on neuropsychological tasks of novel object recognition and executive function over 3 years.

Compared with placebo, participants randomly assigned to multivitamin supplementation had significantly better ModRey immediate recall at 1 year, the primary endpoint, as well as across the 3 years of follow-up on average. Multivitamin supplementation had no significant effects on secondary outcomes. Based on cross-sectional analysis of the association between age and performance on the ModRey, the authors suggested that the effect of the multivitamin intervention improved memory performance above placebo by the equivalent of 3.1 years of age-related memory change.

The authors propose that one possible mechanism for the cognitive effects of multivitamin intervention could be through micronutrient receptors in the hippocampus. However, it is important to note that all cognitive tasks depend on networks of brain regions, and that multivitamin supplementation may affect any number of other regions of the brain to produce the observed cognitive effects.

The authors concluded that daily multivitamin supplementation, compared with placebo, improves memory in older adults and that multivitamin supplementation holds promise as a safe and accessible approach to maintaining cognitive health in older age.

Reference:

1. Yeung LK, Alschuler DM, Wall M, Luttmann-Gibson H, Copeland T, Hale C, Sloan RP, Sesso HD, Manson JE, Brickman AM. Multivitamin supplementation improves memory in older adults: A randomized clinical trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2023 May 24:S0002-9165(23)48904-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.05.011. Online ahead of print.