Research
Multivitamin Use May Reduce CVD Risk Among Men
Researchers analyzed healthy male physicians from the Physicians’ Health Study I cohort.
By: Sean Moloughney
Healthy men who take multivitamins for 20-plus years may lower their risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a long-term prospective study published in the Journal of Nutrition.
Although multivitamins are widely used by U.S. adults, few prospective studies have investigated their association with the long- and short-term risks of CVD. This study investigated how multivitamin use may be associated with the risk of CVD in initially healthy men at baseline.
Researchers studied 18,530 male physicians aged ≥40 years 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).
During a mean follow-up of 12.2 years (total of 225,287 person-years), there were 1,697 incident cases of major CVD (defined as non-fatal myocardial infarction, non-fatal stroke and CVD death). In multivariable-adjusted analyses, no significant associations were observed among baseline multivitamin users compared with non-users for the risk of major CVD events (HR: 0.94; 95% CI: 0.84, 1.05), whereas a self-reported duration of ≥20 years 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.
Researchers concluded that in this long-term prospective study of initially healthy men, multivitamin use for ≥20 years was associated with a lower risk of major CVD events.
