A US study shows that multivitamins may lower cataract risk, but do not have the same effect on macular degeneration.
The researchers followed 14,641 male doctors in the United States. Half of them were taking daily multivitamins, as well as vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta carotene supplements, whereas the other half took a placebo.
In the placebo group, 945 cases of cataract developed over the years, compared to 872 cases in the doctors who took multivitamins, which is a 9% decrease in risk. This risk dropped by as much as 13% for nuclear cataract. Given the extremely high number of patients with cataracts, even a modest 10% drop in risk would nonetheless have a large public health impact, said Dr. William Christen, researcher at Harvard Medical School and the study's lead author.
Mmultivitamins, however, did not produce the same results for AMD prevention. The researchers even found more cases of AMD in patients who had taken the vitamins (152), compared to the placebo group (129). Though it was a finding deemed to be statistically insignificant, it nonetheless raised some concerns. Clearly, this finding needs to be examined further in other trials, concluded Dr. Christen.
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