Centrum Silver ™ Multivitamins may help improve verbal memory in healthy older subjects, reported in a study posted as a preprint. If such a product enhances cognitive performance in regular aging, could it help MCI or early dementia?
The product was studied in a series of randomized placebo controlled trials, under the same grant, but analyzed by two different academic groups for recent papers. They were called the COSMOS-Mind and COSMOS-Web studies; this blog briefly mentioned the first study, C-Mind, last year. The second study was more specifically about the brand name multivitamin [published online, May 2023, an In Press Corrected Proof]. It will be discussed below.
The 3500 subjects were ~ 71 y/o, mainly white, 2/3 women, more than 90% had some college or graduated, and had to be computer/internet users to do the cognitive testing online. Serious illnesses like strokes were excluded, but it’s unclear whether specific cognitive diagnoses were excluded.
This paper looked at results from three tests, designed for different anatomic brain functions. One was reading/verbal recall, the other two included images. For the verbal test [ModRey], words were basically presented on a computer screen, then there was a timed recall of those words.
Results showed that even the placebo group improved on the immediate recall part of the verbal test, but the vitamin group did better:
The authors state that the results show “significantly better” immediate recall with the multivitamin, with an estimated 3 year improvement in “age-related memory change” [although the error bars do seem to overlap in the figure above.]
Perhaps oddly, there were no real performance differences seen in the “retention” part of the verbal ModRey test, or either of the image-oriented tests [the ModBent and Flanker tests, results shown in Table 2 but not here], all designated as secondary outcomes.
AdGadfly’s interpretation: Bravo to those placebo subjects for their own immediate recall improvement over baseline! The paper seems to show the multivitamin wasn’t a panacea across all three tests, and that the placebo subjects improved, too. (AdGadfly guesses that if the Pfizer/Haleon/Centrum folks sold that placebo cheaply, it might be worth a home trial.)
The Cochrane Library archives do have a review of vitamins and supplements from 2018, 28 studies with 83,000 subjects, with no salient findings except a suggestion about studying anti-oxidants further.
Although cocoa, studied in earlier publications from this grant group, didn’t pan out, one wonders about other confounders like caffeine in these subjects. Coffee, tea, or colas seem like nice refreshments for any computer session, whether it be blog reading, ordering for prime delivery, or performing bona fide cognitive tests.
So…should one take these multivitamins? The authors speculate the product might provide micronutrients to the hippocampus, as a possible explanation of these specific results. Lots of multivitamins now come as gummies, perhaps to help us all remember …those good ol’ days, but readers can sort out for themselves if they are worth it.
BTW, HRH Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee was in 1977. She died at age 96, after her 2022 Platinum Jubilee, still completing her duties near the end without overt cognitive issues. Her husband HRH Prince Philip died age 99, also seemingly intact, but he had heart issues. Neither seemed to smoke but neither were shown exercising much. They did stay socially and mentally engaged. They imbibed socially, and not just champagne. Too bad there aren’t any leaked hints from the Royal Physicians about the secrets of their longevity, including cognition!
