Multivitamin supplements may help slow the normal forgetfulness that comes with aging, researchers reported Wednesday.

Analysis of data from more than 3,500 older participants showed that those who took a daily Centrum Silver pill over a three-year period had better memories than those who received a placebo treatment, according to the report published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. .

The effects seen in the study are «very, very encouraging,» said study co-author Adam Brickman, a professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

«Cognitive change and memory loss are one of the major health concerns for older adults,» he said. “And we don’t have many strategies to mitigate the changes that come with aging. Therefore, it is encouraging that a supplement could help address one of the main health problems that older adults have.»

To explore whether a daily multivitamin might benefit cognitive function, the researchers turned to participants in the Study of results of cocoa supplements and multivitamins (COSMOS), a multi-year study that enrolled 21,442 older men and women to investigate the effects of cocoa supplements and multivitamins on cognition and the risk of cancer and cardiovascular events.

Haleon, formerly known as Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, makes Centrum Silver and provided the vitamins used in the trial. Mars Edge, part of the candy and snack maker Mars, partially funded the study with the National Institutes of Health. None of the companies had any role in the design of the trial or input into the results.

For the new study, Brickman and his colleagues followed a subset of 3,562 people from the larger trial who were randomly assigned to receive a multivitamin or a placebo.

The researchers used a new web-based test to assess the participants’ memories at the start of the study, at one year, and at three years.

Compared with the placebo group, men and women who took a daily multivitamin did significantly better on the memory test, which assessed a person’s ability to immediately reproduce a list of words after reading it, the study found.

The researchers estimate that the multivitamin intervention improved memory performance by the equivalent of 3.1 years compared to placebo.

It is the second large study to find a cognitive benefit from taking multivitamins. Last year another trial, COSMOS-Mind, found that daily multivitamins were associated with a 60% slowing of cognitive aging globally. That study also used data from a subset of COSMOS participants.

It’s not uncommon for researchers to fail to replicate the results of «big flashy studies,» Brickman said. “We have a clear replication of the effect of multivitamins on cognition. That gives us much more confidence in the data.”

Researchers don’t yet know which ingredient in multivitamins, which include vitamins A, C, B and zinc, might be driving the effects on cognition. «This is important to understand,» said epidemiologist Howard Sesso, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the study.

It is also not clear if these results would be seen with other brands of multivitamins.

“This particular brand was selected because it is commonly used in the US and has a track record of good quality and safety,” said Sesso, who is also a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “In addition, we tested a very similar Centrum Silver formulation” in a previous study called Physicians Health Study II, he said. That study found no cognitive benefit from taking multivitamins.

Researchers have not yet looked at other types of multivitamins to determine if they would work as well or if the benefit is specific to a certain formulation.

The effect seen by the researchers is relatively small, so an individual might not notice any improvement, although it can be seen in the larger data, said Dr. Paul Newhouse, director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Cognitive Medicine, who was not involved. in the study. new research.

It is notable that «neither group showed a decline in cognition,» he said. «Rather, you’re looking at the degree to which a group improved over three years.»

Although the effect is small, using multivitamins along with other lifestyle modifications that have already been shown to reduce the risk of cognitive decline, such as exercise and following the Mediterranean diet, could lead to a greater combined impact, he said. .

Newhouse does not recommend that doctors prescribe multivitamins to their patients to prevent cognitive decline.

“We need longer studies,” he said. «But this study suggests that multivitamin supplementation is not harmful and may potentially be beneficial.»

Also, because the participants had completed or attended college, the results might not be the same for other groups of people, said Dr. Riddhi Patira, an investigator with the Alzheimer’s Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. .

Nor are they typical of the patients he sees, who are already experiencing cognitive decline.

“These are normal people who can go online to get tested,” Patira said. “They are very motivated people.”

When patients ask him for lifestyle changes that can help prevent cognitive decline, he suggests a healthy diet.

Patira, who was not involved in the new study, feels the follow-up isn’t long enough to suggest multivitamins for a cognitive boost.

In healthy people with normal cognition, the declines «move so slowly that it’s hard to detect anything significant after a year,» he said, adding that the differences might not be detectable for another five to 20 years.