Reacción a "Daily intake of a multivitamin supplement slightly slows biological ageing, according to a clinical trial"

The work led by Howard Sesso, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, is part of the COSMOS clinical trial (COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study). This clinical trial aims to evaluate the health effects of a commonly used multivitamin complex and a cocoa extract in over 20,000 participants. Previous results from this large-scale study had shown that cocoa reduced mortality from cardiovascular disorders and certain inflammatory markers, while the multivitamin complex, in a smaller sub-study, improved memory and attention and reduced brain ageing. To assess this, the authors used 'epigenetic clocks', increasingly popular tools that estimate an individual’s biological age by analysing DNA methylation changes that occur as people get older. After two years, supplementation with the multivitamin complex reduced the biological age of treated participants by 2.7 to 5.1 months compared with the control group. Regarding the cocoa extract, no significant effects were observed across the five epigenetic clocks analysed.

Although the study’s results are moderate, it is important to consider that ageing is an extremely complex process involving multiple molecular pathways, making it difficult for a single epigenetic clock to capture the biological state of all of them. Therefore, the absence of detectable changes in some of these clocks does not necessarily invalidate the observed benefits that these supplements may provide. For this reason, it is recommended to use as many clocks as possible, and even combine them with other measures based on different types of biological information that also change with age, such as gene activity, levels of certain blood components, or the composition of the gut microbiota.

In short, while it cannot be claimed that these supplements represent a definitive 'cure' for the biological decline associated with ageing, ensuring complete and balanced nutrition remains a fundamental pillar of self-care for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. This is especially relevant today, as ageing has become the main risk factor for the most significant diseases in our society, including cancer and cardiovascular and neurodegenerative conditions. For this reason, studies that use molecular methods to reliably and objectively measure 'biological age' are gaining increasing importance and are crucial in the scientific pursuit of improving human health and well-being.