Multivitamins, Cancers, and Mortality Risk
However, the study showed that multivitamins were associated with a slightly lower incidence of any cancer, unlike individual vitamins or minerals.
While research shows that dietary patterns that include fruits and vegetables help decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, there’s no clear evidence that packaging vitamins in a pill helps prevent these chronic illnesses, says Jenny Jia, MD, instructor of medicine and preventive medicine at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, and one of the coauthors of the JAMA editorial mentioned above.
A Lack of Diversity in Research
Another sticking point, says Dr. Jia, is that the available research on multivitamins and health outcomes doesn’t include a diverse group of people. Typically, people who participate in vitamin studies are those who tend to be motivated to be healthy, she says. “They’ve adopted healthy patterns like eating more fruits and vegetables. There’s definitely certain gaps within the current research that we have,” Jia says.
Would the outcome be different — could we see a benefit — if more diverse study participants from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds were included? It’s hard to say without that data.
Promise for Heart Health
That said, researchers presented a more recent analysis at the annual meeting of the American Society of Nutrition, NUTRITION 2026, suggesting a benefit of multivitamin use for certain symptoms of heart failure and overall functional health in adults over 60 years of age. Functional health, which refers to your ability to perform daily tasks independently, is an important factor in healthy aging.
The analysis looked at data from over 16,000 people registered in the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS). This is a randomized controlled trial — typically considered the gold standard for study design — that has been testing the effects of multivitamins and a cocoa extract supplement by assigning older adults to take either a multivitamin, a cocoa supplement, both, or a placebo.
After three years of the study, the researchers presenting at NUTRITION 2026 found that older adults who took a multivitamin scored higher than participants in other groups on a validated questionnaire measuring functional health related to heart disease. They linked this to reduced daily impact of heart failure symptoms, including breathlessness, swelling, and extreme tiredness, while taking the multivitamin.
However, it’s worth noting that these findings are preliminary and haven’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. More research is necessary to more confidently establish a link between multivitamin use and long-term clinical benefits, and to identify the possible mechanisms underlying this functional health protection.
Researchers also don’t suggest that multivitamins are a replacement for the nutrition you get from eating a nutrient-dense diet — rather, they may provide additional support for older adults with heart failure.
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