admin In a new analysis of findings from 277 clinical trials using 24 different intercessions, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have found that almost all vitamin, mineral and other nutrient supplements or diets cannot be linked to longer life or protection from heart disease.
They have found that most of the supplements were not associated with any harm, but possible health benefits only from a low-salt diet, omega-3 fatty acid supplements and possibly folic acid supplements for some people. Researchers also found that supplements combining calcium and vitamin D may in fact be linked to a slightly increased stroke risk.
Results of the analysis were published on July 8 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Americans spend $31 billion every year on such products. Surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 52% of Americans take a least one vitamin or other dietary/nutritional supplement daily.
“The panacea or magic bullet that people keep searching for in dietary supplements isn’t there,” says senior author of the study Erin D. Michos, M.D., M.H.S., associate director of preventive cardiology at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “People should focus on getting their nutrients from a heart-healthy diet, because the data increasingly show that the majority of healthy adults don’t need to take supplements.”
For the current study, the researchers used data from 277 randomized clinical trials that evaluated 16 vitamins or other supplements and eight diets for their association with mortality or heart conditions including coronary heart disease, stroke, and heart attack. All together they included data gathered on 992,129 research participants worldwide.
The majority of the supplements including multivitamins, selenium, vitamin A, vitamin B6, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin D alone, calcium alone and iron showed no link to increased or decreased risk of death or heart health.
In the three studies of 3,518 people that looked at a low-salt diet in people with healthy blood pressure, there were 79 deaths. The researchers say that they found a 10% decrease in the risk of death in these people, which they classified as a moderate associated impact.
The authors point out that the studies suggesting the greatest impact of folic acid supplementation on reducing stroke risk took place in China, where cereals and grains aren’t fortified with folic acid like they are in the U.S. Thus, they say, this apparent protective effect may not be applicable in regions where most people get enough folic acid in their diet.
“Our analysis carries a simple message that although there may be some evidence that a few interventions have an impact on death and cardiovascular health, the vast majority of multivitamins, minerals and different types of diets had no measurable effect on survival or cardiovascular disease risk reduction,” says lead author Safi U. Khan, M.D., an assistant professor of Medicine at West Virginia University.
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