Taking multivitamins daily does not help healthy people live longer.
- A comprehensive analysis of 3 studies found no association between regular multivitamin use and a lower risk of death.
- This represented nearly 400,000 healthy American adults followed for more than 20 years.
- Researchers believe the effect of supplements on different types of populations needs to be evaluated.
Many people take multiple vitamins a day in hopes of improving their health and living longer. But the move has little effect, according to a study published in the journal JAMA Network Open June 26, 2024.
Its authors assure, in fact, that they found no association between the regular absorption of multivitamins and a lower risk of death.
Vitamins and death: more than 390,000 adults followed over 20 years
To assess the long-term effects of supplementation on overall mortality, as well as deaths from cancer and cardiovascular disease, researchers from National Cancer Institute took up three large American studies. This represents exactly 390,124 adults followed for more than 20 years. The latter had a median age of 61.5 years. They were generally in good health, with no history of cancer or other chronic diseases.
Among vitamin users, 49.3% were female and 42.0% had a college education. Among nonusers, the rates were 39.3% and 37.9%, respectively. A total of 164,762 deaths occurred during the study period.
Vitamins do not reduce mortality in healthy people
Analysis of the data collected shows that people who take vitamins daily do not have a lower risk of death from any cause than those who do not use them. “Multivitamin use was not associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality in the first half or second half of follow-up“, write the authors in their scientific article.
Furthermore, they observed no difference in mortality linked to malignant tumors as well as that due to cardiac or cerebrovascular pathologies.
However, the team acknowledges that their work has some limitations: it is an observational study dependent on feedback from participants and the majority of volunteers were Western. So, for the researchers, it is now important to assess “multivitamin use and risk of death among different populations, such as those with documented nutritional deficiencies, as well as the potential impact of regular multivitamin use on other health problems associated with aging.”
