Vitamin pills: Useless against stroke and heart attack

Nutritional supplements such as vitamins and minerals do not lower the risk of dying from a cerebral infarction or heart disease. This was the result of an overview study with more than two million participants.

One in four Germans swallows them, but very few need them: In 2015, the retail trade generated sales of food supplements and vitamin preparations of around 1.1 billion euros. The fact that this money is badly invested is now confirmed by a meta-analysis of the use of the preparations against strokes and heart attacks.

A total of 3249 studies from the years 1970 to 2016 were conducted by US physicians around the cardiologist Dr. Joonseok Kim from the University of Alabama in Birmingham, who took them into account for the meta-analysis. In order to clarify how the intake of dietary supplements influences the risk of stroke and heart disease, the researchers analysed 18 particularly high-quality studies in which more than two million people had taken part.
"The result is sobering and says that there is no benefit for the entire population from such a measure," says Professor Dr. Peter Berlit of the German Society of Neurology (DGN). If one summarizes the mortality rate for all cardiovascular diseases, the relative risk (RR) for taking dietary supplements is exactly 1.00. According to the meta-analysis, it made no difference whether the participants took an extra dose of vitamins, minerals or trace elements or not. The researchers came to the same result - in the context of the statistical fluctuations - with the separate consideration of heart mortality (RR 1.02), death by stroke (RR 0.95) and the frequency of strokes (RR 0.98).

Only the risk for heart disease seemed to speak with an RR of 0.88 for dietary supplements. In addition to this unsatisfactory result, there is also the alarming result of a systematic meta-analysis of 78 randomised studies conducted in 2012 by the Cochrane Collaboration, according to which dietary supplementation with antioxidants not only does not help but even increases mortality," said Berlit.

In the current study, researchers had made the greatest effort to identify subgroups that might benefit from dietary supplements. However, the result always remained negative, no matter how long the preparations were taken, how old the study participants were, whether man or woman, smoker or non-smoker, athletic or not.

"With Multivitamin tablets annually billion conversions are made, the Metaanalysis shows however clearly that these pills neither prevent strokes nor the mortality at cardiovascular illnesses lower , summarize professor Dr. Armin grey of the German impact society (DSG) the results: From these pills profit only manufacturers and salesmen. On the other hand, it has been clearly proven that salad, fruit and vegetables counteract vascular diseases. In lettuce, fruit and vegetables, vitamins are found in their natural environment." Other effective measures, which even save money, are not smoking or drinking large amounts of alcohol and regular physical exercise.

Research: Joonseok Kim et al., publication in Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes. 2018 Jul;11(7):e004224. doi: 10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.117.004224.