For healthy adults, there is no association between regular multivitamin use and a lower risk of death, according to a new study that analyzed data from nearly 400,000 healthy U.S. adults for more than 20 years.
According to researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, who led the study, previous research of multivitamin use and mortality has yielded "mixed results," and has been limited by short follow-up times.
In their latest study, published Wednesday, June 26, in the journal JAMA Network Open, researchers set out to learn whether there is a relationship between long-term regular multivitamin use and overall mortality as well as death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.
They analyzed data from three large studies involving a total of 390,124 generally healthy U.S. adults with no history of cancer or other chronic diseases who were followed for more than 20 years.
Along with multivitamin use, the data included extensive information on demographics and lifestyle factors, which, along with the large sample size, allowed researchers to mitigate the effects of possible biases. Examples of biases that may have influenced other, smaller studies include an association between people who use multivitamins having generally healthier lifestyles, or the sicker patients may be more likely to increase their multivitamin use.
After adjusting for factors such as race and ethnicity, education, and diet quality, the analysis showed that people who took daily multivitamins did not have a lower risk of death from any cause than people who did not take vitamins. There were also no differences in risk of death from cancer, heart disease, or cerebrovascular diseases.
—TMX contributed to this report.