Case Closed: Multivitamins Should Not Be Used

The editorialists are fed up: “Enough is enough.” Writing about three new papers in the Annals of Internal Medicine that find no benefits for the use of multivitamins — only the latest in a long line of negative findings — Eliseo Guallar and colleagues write:

…we believe that the case is closed— supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful. These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough.

In the first paper,  Stephen Fortmann and colleagues performed an updated systematic evidence review of vitamin and mineral supplements for the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

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In the second paper, investigators from the Physicians Health Study II randomized nearly 6,000 physicians 65 years of age or older to  a multivitamin or a placebo.

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In the third paper, Gervasio Lamas and his fellow investigators in the NIH’s Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) randomized 1,708 patients who had had a heart attack to a multivitamin supplement or placebo.

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Click here to read the full story on Forbes.