Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
Industry-funded trial with surprising results
Yesterday I reported about the COSMOS clinical trial demonstrating reductions in mortality among people taking cocoa flavanol supplements.
That trial had another arm: multivitamin supplements.
The study: Multivitamins in the Prevention of Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease: The COSMOS Randomized Clinical Trial. Sesso HD et al. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, nqac056, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac056
Conclusion: The supplements did not reduce cardiovascular disease, cancer, or all-cause mortality in older men and women.
Funding: The COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS) is supported by an investigator-initiated grant from Mars Edge, a segment of Mars dedicated to nutrition research and products, which included infrastructure support and the donation of study pills and packaging. Pfizer Consumer Healthcare (now part of GSK Consumer Healthcare) provided support through the partial provision of study pills and packaging.
Conflicts of interest: Drs. Sesso and Manson reported receiving investigatorinitiated grants from Mars Edge, a segment of Mars Incorporated dedicated to nutrition research and products, for infrastructure support and donation of COSMOS study pills and packaging,
Pfizer Consumer Healthcare (now part of GSK Consumer Healthcare) for donation of COSMOS study pills and packaging during the conduct of the study. Dr. Sesso additionally reported receiving investigator-initiated grants from Pure Encapsulations and Pfizer Inc. and honoraria
and/or travel for lectures from the Council for Responsible Nutrition, BASF, NIH, and American Society of Nutrition during the conduct of the study. No other authors reported any conflicts of interest.
Comment: Pfizer, of course, makes Centrum multivitamin supplements aimed at older adults.
I was surprised by this part of the trial because previous studies have also shown no consistently beneficial effect of supplementation of individual vitamins or multivitamins on disease risk. Pfizer must have hoped to find benefits for Centrum. This is a rare industry-supported study that showed no benefits and is, therefore, worth attention.
