The recents study that concluded that vitamins are useless and can even be harmful, is a total fake.
The dropout rate of people participating in the study was very high, and the report does not tell you which vitamin they took and the dosage.
CBS and CNN are all bought off by the Drug Companies so they will tout this bogus study, but they all failed to mention the pertinent facts that this trial was seriously flawed!
Doctors don't want you to take vitamins because they are all on the drug company payroll. Drug companies hate the vitamin industry.
Here is the study reported in the annals.com website. I highlighted in red the reports own conclusions.
Oral High-Dose Multivitamins and Minerals After Myocardial Infarction: A Randomized Trial
Ann Intern Med. 2013;159(12):797-805-805. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-159-12-201312170-00004
Background: Whether high-dose multivitamins are effective for secondary prevention of atherosclerotic disease is unknown.
Objective: To assess whether oral multivitamins reduce cardiovascular events and are safe.
Design: Double-blind, placebo-controlled, 2 × 2 factorial, multicenter, randomized trial. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00044213)
Setting: 134 U.S. and Canadian academic and clinical sites.
Patients: 1708 patients aged 50 years or older who had myocardial infarction (MI) at least 6 weeks earlier and had serum creatinine levels of 176.8 µmol/L (2.0 mg/dL) or less.
Intervention: Patients were randomly assigned to an oral, 28-component, high-dose multivitamin and multimineral mixture or placebo.
Measurements: The primary end point was time to total death, recurrent MI, stroke, coronary revascularization, or hospitalization for angina.
Results: The median age was 65 years, and 18% of patients were women. The qualifying MI occurred a median of 4.6 years (interquartile range [IQR], 1.6 to 9.2 years) before enrollment. Median follow-up was 55 months (IQR, 26 to 60 months). Patients received vitamins for a median of 31 months (IQR, 13 to 59 months) in the vitamin group and 35 months (IQR, 13 to 60 months) in the placebo group (P = 0.65). Totals of 645 (76%) and 646 (76%) patients in the vitamin and placebo groups, respectively, completed at least 1 year of oral therapy (P = 0.98), and 400 (47%) and 426 (50%) patients, respectively, completed at least 3 years (P = 0.23). Totals of 394 (46%) and 390 (46%) patients in the vitamin and placebo groups, respectively, discontinued the vitamin regimen (P = 0.67), and 17% of patients withdrew from the study. The primary end point occurred in 230 (27%) patients in the vitamin group and 253 (30%) in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.89 [95% CI, 0.75 to 1.07]; P = 0.21). No evidence suggested harm from vitamin therapy in any category of adverse events.
Limitation: There was considerable nonadherence and withdrawal, limiting the ability to draw firm conclusions (particularly about safety).
Conclusion: High-dose oral multivitamins and multiminerals did not statistically significantly reduce cardiovascular events in patients after MI who received standard medications. However, this conclusion is tempered by the nonadherence rate.
Primary Funding Source: National Institutes of Health.
