|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Study: Multivitamins Won’t Help You Live Longer
A full third of American adults take multivitamins, despite prior studies suggesting they do little to boost health.
Now, a study involving almost 400,000 people finds zero benefit from multivitamin use in helping folks live longer.
Among people “without a history of major chronic diseases, we did not find evidence to support improved longevity among healthy adults who regularly take multivitamins,” concluded a team led by Erikka Loftfield. She’s with the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Her team published its findings June 26 in the journal JAMA Network Open.
In the study, Loftfield’s group analyzed data from three prospective studies (meaning people were followed over time) with an average 27 years of follow-up.
Over 390,000 healthy adults were enrolled in the studies, and they averaged about 61 years of age upon study entry. Researchers gathered data on the participants’ multivitamin use.
Over the nearly three decades of follow-up, almost 165,000 of the participants died. About 50,000 deaths were attributed to cancer, about 35,000 deaths were caused by heart disease and 9,275 deaths were linked to strokes.
