Multivitamin and ageing: A new study has found that taking a daily multivitamin may slightly slow some markers linked to biological ageing.
The research, published in Nature Medicine on March 9, reported that older adults who took a multivitamin daily for two years showed a modest slowing of biological ageing compared with those who did not. The difference was estimated at about four months.
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Researchers reported that the effect appeared to be stronger among participants who were already ageing faster biologically than their chronological age would suggest.
Howard Sesso, one of the study’s authors and an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said the broader goal of such work is not only to understand how people might live longer, but also how they might live healthier lives. He said it is still too early to connect the findings directly to clinical outcomes, but added that the multivitamin results appeared to be moving in that direction over the two years.
The findings have drawn attention from ageing researchers. Steve Horvath, a geroscientist at Altos Labs in Cambridge, described the study as both rigorous and significant, saying it adds to growing interest in whether common supplements can have a measurable effect on ageing.
The analysis was based on blood samples from 958 healthy participants in the United States-based COSMOS trial, a randomised controlled study. The average age of participants was about 70. Blood samples were collected at the start of the trial and again after 12 and 24 months.
To estimate biological age, the research team used five epigenetic clocks. These are tools that track DNA methylation, or chemical changes that occur at specific points in the genome over time. Because these methylation patterns tend to shift in predictable ways with age, they are widely used as indicators of biological ageing.
The researchers found that daily multivitamin use significantly slowed ageing markers in two of the five clocks examined. Both of those clocks are also associated with mortality risk.
Experts said the impact appears modest, but the consistency across multiple biological markers makes the findings notable. Horvath, who developed one of the clocks used in the study, said this type of pattern is exactly what researchers hope to see when assessing whether an intervention may be affecting the ageing process.