Daily multivitamin delays biological aging by up to 5 months, trial finds

• Over the last few years, researchers have been focusing on finding new ways for people to slow their biological aging.
• Past studies show that making certain healthy lifestyle choices, such as eating a healthy diet, may help slow the biological aging process.
• A new study found that taking a daily multivitamin may help slow biological aging, including in older adults who are already experiencing accelerated biological aging. 

Over the last few years, researchers have been focusing on finding new ways for people to slow their biological aging — the process by which the body begins to age, which may not match a person’s chronological age. 

Past studies show that making certain healthy lifestyle choices, such as not smoking, being physically active, getting enough sleep, and eating a healthy dietmay help slow the biological aging process.

“Living longer is one thing; living better is just as important,” Howard Sesso, ScD, MPH, associate director of the Division of Preventive Medicine in the Mass General Brigham Department of Medicine, told GMHN. “More clinical trials are needed under the effects of lifestyle and pharmacologic interventions on biological aging captured through epigenetics and other biomarkersTrusted Source.”

Sesso is the senior author of a new study recently published in Nature Medicinethat found that taking a daily multivitamin may help slow biological aging, including in older adults already experiencing accelerated biological aging. 

For this study, researchers analyzed data from blood samples of 958 randomly selected participants of the COcoa Supplement Multivitamins Outcomes Study (COSMOS), with an average chronological age of 70.

“COSMOS represents the first large-scale randomized clinical trial that examines the effects of a common dietary supplement on epigenetic clocks; we (hoped) to delve further into this in COSMOS,” Sesso explained. “We previously reported benefits in the COSMOS trial for the benefits of the multivitamin intervention on (e.g.) cognition and the cocoa extract intervention on (e.g.) cardiovascular disease death, so we leveraged the longitudinal biospecimens collected in a large subset of COSMOS participants to determine whether these benefits extended to improvements in biological aging versus placebo.” 

For this study, Sesso said they used the standard Centrum Silver multivitamin formulation at the time the COSMOS trial began in the mid-2010s, which is sold in the United States.

“It contains all essential vitamins and minerals at lower amounts, along with a few other nutrients,” he explained. “Whether the COSMOS trial findings extend to similar broad-based multivitamin formulations is an important question; intuitively, it may, but we simply don’t have data to address it directly.”

Study participants were randomly selected to take daily either a multivitamin and cocoa extract, cocoa extract and placebo, a multivitamin and placebo, or just placebos over two years. The multivitamin contained vitamins A, C, D3, E, and K, as well as B vitamins, and minerals such as magnesium, zinc, calcium, and others.

At the study’s conclusion, researchers found that participants in the multivitamin group had slowed two of the five epigenetic clocks, compared with the placebo group. This translates to about 2.7–5.1 months of slowing after two years.

The two specific “second-generation” epigenetic clocks that the multivitamin slowed were PCGrimAge and PCPhenoAge, while the other three, which the multivitamin had no significant effect on, were the Horvath and Hannum clocks or the DunedinPACE measure.

“Keep in mind that, on average, biological aging through these clocks increased in both intervention groups, but the changes over two years were significantly less in the multivitamin group,” he added. 

Additionally, scientists reported that study participants who were biologically older than their actual age at the start of the COSMOS trial benefited the most from taking the daily multivitamin

“We plan to delve more deeply into other epigenetic clocks from our DNA methylation data in COSMOS, plus have additional epigenetic data in two other large randomized clinical trials testing dietary supplements,” Sesso said, when asked about the next planned steps for this research. 

“More clinical trials are needed to (understand) the effects of lifestyle and pharmacologic interventions on biological aging captured through epigenetics and other biomarkers,” he added. 

GMHCN spoke with Zeeshan Khan, MD, chief of geriatric medicine at Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center in New Jersey, about this study, who commented that his first reaction to its findings was a bit of relief mixed with cautious optimism, as for years, patients have asked him if they should be taking a multivitamin. 

“Before this article, the evidence has been somewhat ambiguous for generally well-nourished adults,” Khan explained. “Now we have a high quality study which has found a safe, accessible, and affordable intervention that may slow down a key epigenetic aging clock.” 

Khan said while this study is a “great first step,” to translate this into a firm clinical recommendation, several things need to happen next. 

“First, we need long-term follow-up on clinical outcomes: do those patients with a slowed down epigenetic clock actually experience fewer age-related diseases (think heart attack, cancer, or dementia),” he detailed. “Next, what was the mechanism of action? Was it a specific vitamin or mineral in the supplement? Future studies could test different formulations to pinpoint the key ingredients and help us understand why it works.”
 

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