Multivitamin pill a day helps keep some memory loss at bay
LONDON: A daily multivitamin pill can slow an important aspect of age-related memory loss, according to a study by Harvard and other US universities.
It found a daily pill improved episodic memory by about three years. Episodic memory is measured by instant recall, and is particularly vulnerable with normal ageing.
While the benefit of the pill was first seen at one year, it was sustained across the three years of the trial.
Published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, this is the second of two so-called “COSMOS” studies that show multivitamins can benefit memory and cognition.
The authors emphasised that one pill will do, that more is not necessarily better and high doses could be damaging.
They said the pill did not significantly affect other aspects of memory such as memory retention and executive function, but it did help maintain or enhance cognitive functioning, a top health concern for older adults.
“Although our observed effect size is small, and may not be noticeable to all individuals receiving multivitamin supplementation, even small effect sizes can result in large health benefits at the population level,” the authors said.
They said that as multivitamins were relatively inexpensive, accessible and had few adverse effects, they might be a useful population health intervention.
For optimal health, the brain needs several micronutrients. Other randomised trials had generally tested one or a few micronutrients, rather than a multivitamin with more than 20 essential vitamins and minerals.
In a Q&A published in The Harvard Gazette, JoAnn Manson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the trial, said it was “remarkable” that two separate randomised (COSMOS) trials with different methodologies showed statistically significant benefits of multivitamins compared to placebo.
“Based on the consistency of the findings, I think we can now say, ‘A multivitamin a day helps keep memory loss at bay’,” she said.
It was unlikely, she said, that a single nutrient was a magic bullet and that a deficiency of one or more could accelerate cognitive ageing. “So, taking a multivitamin containing more than 20 of these micronutrients will tend to benefit more people than taking a single isolated micronutrient.”
While every single ingredient in the pill may not be a major contributor, she said some top candidates were vitamin B12, other B vitamins, vitamin D, lutein, zinc and magnesium.
Both studies showed people with a history of cardiovascular disease benefited most. At the start of the study, they had worse memory performance than others. After a year on the pill, they recovered to a comparable level.
Professor Mason said it was likely they had lower levels of particular micronutrients and the pills attenuated these deficits. It was also possible they benefited because of other medication they were taking.
In the study, 3500 people aged 60 or older used web-based memory tests and were assessed in 15,000 individual testing sessions over 36 months.
The authors said more research was needed to determine who would benefit most and to understand the biological mechanisms involved.
One possible mechanism could relate to micronutrient receptors in the hippocampus, which has a major role in memory. As it is differentially affected by age, the detection of the cognitive effects of multivitamins in older adults might be most obvious with tasks that are hippocampus-dependent.
