The Journal of Nutrition published a review paper looking at whether the long term use of a multivitamin increased or decreased risk of a cardiovascular incident in men.[1] In summary the longer men ingested multivitamins – greater than 20 years being the time frame the authors highlight, the better their chance of avoiding a major CVD event.
Background
Although multivitamins are widely used by US adults, few prospective studies have investigated their association with the long- and short-term risks of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
Objective
The aim of this study was to investigate how multivitamin use is associated with the risk of CVD in initially healthy men at baseline.
Methods
We studied 18,530 male physicians aged ≥40 y from the Physicians’ Health Study I cohort who were free of CVD and cancer at baseline (1982). All men provided a wide range of self-reported lifestyle and clinical factors plus intake of selected foods and dietary supplements. Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate multivariable-adjusted HRs (95% CIs).
Results
During a mean follow-up of 12.2 y (total of 225,287 person-years), there were 1697 incident cases of major CVD (defined as nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke, and CVD death). In multivariable-adjusted analyses, no significant associations were observed among baseline multivitamin users compared with nonusers for the risk of major CVD events (HR: 0.94; 95% CI: 0.84, 1.05), whereas a self-reported duration of ≥20 y at baseline was associated with lower risk (HR: 0.56; 95% CI: 0.35, 0.90; P-trend = 0.05). Baseline multivitamin use was also significantly inversely associated with the risk of cardiac revascularization (HR: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.75, 0.98). Baseline use of multivitamins was not significantly associated with other CVD endpoints.
Conclusion
In this long-term prospective study in initially healthy men, multivitamin use for ≥20 y was associated with a lower risk of major CVD events.
Reference
[1] Rautiainen S, Rist PM, Glynn RJ, Buring JE, Gaziano JM, Sesso HD. Multivitamin Use and the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in Men. J Nutr. 2016 Apr 27. View Abstract
