ReviewDrugs2011
Vitamins and cognition: what is the evidence?
Review in Drugs, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Effect of Anthocyanins on Cognition: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Clinical Trial Studies in Cognitively Impaired and Healthy Adults.Current nutrition reports · 2025Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of the Effect of Dietary Supplements on Cognitive Performance in Healthy Young Adults and Military Personnel.Nutrients · 2020Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Vitamin and mineral supplementation for maintaining cognitive function in cognitively healthy people in mid and late life.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2018Pooled it
- Vitamin and mineral supplementation for preventing dementia or delaying cognitive decline in people with mild cognitive impairment.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2018Pooled it
- A systematic review and meta-analysis on the prevalence of dietary supplement use by military personnel.BMC complementary and alternative medicine · 2014Pooled it
- Improvements to mood, stress and loneliness following 12-week multivitamin supplementation in older adults: a randomised, placebo-controlled, trial.European journal of clinical nutrition · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Trial
- Trial
- Improved blood biomarkers but no cognitive effects from 16 weeks of multivitamin supplementation in healthy older adults.Nutrients · 2015Trial
- Long-term multivitamin supplementation and cognitive function in men: a randomized trial.Annals of internal medicine · 2013Trial
- Trial
- Trial
- Structure-Function Relationships and Health-Promoting Properties of the Main Nutraceuticals of the Cactus Pear (Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- The Role of Water-Soluble Vitamins and Vitamin D in Prevention and Treatment of Depression and Seasonal Affective Disorder in Adults.Nutrients · 2024Review
- A Combinational Therapy for Preventing and Delaying the Onset of Alzheimer's Disease: A Focus on Probiotic and Vitamin Co-Supplementation.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Is good dietary diversity a predictor of academic success?Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis · 2023Article
- Article
- Preliminary analysis of immunoregulatory mechanism of hyperhomocysteinemia-induced brain injury in Wistar-Kyoto rats.Experimental and therapeutic medicine · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Vitamin supplements are consumed for their purported health benefits by a large segment of the populations of developed countries. Several indirect strands of evidence suggest that increasing levels of vitamins may improve brain function. These include evidence that individual vitamins are intrinsically involved in the cellular and physiological processes underpinning brain function; that small proportions of the population exhibit biochemical deficiencies in each individual vitamin, suggesting that a much larger proportion have less than optimal overall micronutrient status; and that epidemiological research suggests a relationship between individual vitamins (or the potentially neurotoxic amino acid homocysteine, which is related to B vitamin status), and cognitive function and mood. The related question as to whether direct supplementation with vitamins can therefore improve psychological functioning in cognitively intact individuals has been addressed in a number of studies. The evidence reviewed here suggests that, whereas studies involving supplementation with single vitamins, or restricted ranges of vitamins, have demonstrated equivocal results, evidence from studies involving the administration of broader ranges of vitamins, or multivitamins, suggest potential efficacy in terms of cognitive and psychological functioning. In contrast to the literature investigating restricted ranges of vitamins, most of the evidence regarding multivitamins was collected from healthy, non-elderly samples, suggesting that more research in this population is warranted.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.