A multivitamin a day could keep dementia at bay
TAKING a daily multivitamin pill could help to ward off dementia, researchers claim.
Supplements could help keep brains sharp for an extra two years, they suggested.
The researchers followed more than 2,200 participants aged 65 and older for three years, with some taking a daily multivitamin-mineral supplement and others a placebo.
They found taking supplements for three years slowed cognitive decline associated with ageing by 60 per cent – or about 1.8 years.
The authors said their research was the first large long-term study of the cognitive benefits of multivitamins for older adults.
They emphasised that more research on a bigger and more diverse scale is required, saying it was too early to recommend daily multivitamin supplementation to prevent cognitive decline.
The US study – published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association – was run by Wake Forest University School of Medicine, North Carolina, in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
There are currently around 900,000 people with dementia in the UK, a number projected to rise to 1.6million by 2040, according to the Alzheimer’s Society. There is currently no treatment to cure it.
Professor Laura Baker, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said: ‘There’s an urgent need for safe and affordable interventions to protect cognition against a decline in older adults. Our study showed that daily multivitamin- mineral supplementation resulted in statistically significant cognitive improvement.’
She added: ‘While these preliminary findings are promising, additional research is needed in a larger and more diverse group.
‘Also, we still have work to do to better understand why the multivitamin might benefit cognition in older adults.’
Dementia is not a disease but a term describing symptoms that suggest difficulties with cognitive function caused by other diseases of the brain, according to Age UK. Cognitive function – which includes
‘A significant improvement’
recognition of faces, sounds and smells, and memory – is commonly believed to decline in older age.
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is the stage between the expected cognitive decline of normal ageing and the more serious decline of dementia.
Some people with MCI will go on to develop dementia while others will not, meaning it can sometimes be considered an early stage of diseases such as Alzheimer’s – the most common form of dementia.