Highlights
- •Central blood pressure measures increase with age and heighten cardiovascular risk.
- •Nutritional supplements may reduce central blood pressures.
- •This RCT investigated 16-weeks multivitamin supplementation versus placebo in healthy older adults.
- •No effect of supplementation was observed for any measure of central or brachial blood pressure.
Abstract
Background and aims
Central blood pressure rises with age, which increases cardiovascular risk. There
is some evidence that nutritional supplements may be useful to reduce central blood
pressures in older people, but no studies have investigated the effects of multivitamin
supplements for this purpose. This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study
investigated the effects of 16-weeks supplementation with gender-specific multivitamin
and herbal supplements.
Method
Participants were healthy individuals, free from heart disease, and included 160 females
aged ≥50 and 79 males aged 50–65 years. Analyses of co-variance, correcting for baseline
cardiovascular assessments, were used to determine the effects of supplementation
on central cardiovascular measures including augmentation index, augmentation pressure
and pulse pressure. Significance was set at p = 0.016.
Results
No effects of multivitamin supplementation were observed in either males or females
(respectively) for central augmentation index (p = 0.841; p = 0.296), central augmentation
pressure (p = 0.794; p = 0.442), and central pulse pressure (p = 0.078; p = 0.304).
Similarly, there was no treatment effect observed for brachial systolic, diastolic
or pulse pressures.
Conclusion
Four months multivitamin supplementation does not appear to exert any benefit to measures
of central blood pressure in healthy older people.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 19, 2016
Accepted:
January 18,
2016
Received in revised form:
January 12,
2016
Received:
October 7,
2015
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
