Cognitive and mood effects in healthy children during 12 weeks' supplementation with multi-vitamin/minerals

Abstract

Adequate levels of vitamins and minerals are essential for optimal neural functioning. A high proportion of individuals, including children, suffer from deficiencies in one or more vitamins or minerals. This study investigated whether daily supplementation with vitamins/minerals could modulate cognitive performance and mood in healthy children. In this randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel groups investigation, eighty-one healthy children aged from 8 to 14 years underwent laboratory assessments of their cognitive performance and mood pre-dose and at 1 and 3 h post-dose on the first and last days of 12 weeks' supplementation with a commercially available vitamins/mineral product (Pharmaton Kiddie). Interim assessments were also completed at home after 4 and 8 weeks at 3 h post-dose. Each assessment comprised completion of a cognitive battery, delivered over the Internet, which included tasks assessing mood and the speed and accuracy of attention and aspects of memory (secondary, semantic and spatial working memory). The vitamin/mineral group performed more accurately on two attention tasks: 'Arrows' choice reaction time task at 4 and 8 weeks; 'Arrow Flankers' choice reaction time task at 4, 8 and 12 weeks. A single task outcome (Picture Recognition errors) evinced significant decrements at 12 weeks. Mood was not modulated in any interpretable manner. Whilst it is possible that the significant improvements following treatment were due to non-significant numerical differences in performance at baseline, these results would seem to suggest that vitamin/mineral supplementation has the potential to improve brain function in healthy children. This proposition requires further investigation. Adequate levels of vitamins and minerals are essential for the optimal performance of a host of physiological processes that have both direct and indirect effects on brain function, including neurotransmitter synthesis, receptor binding, membrane ion pump function, energy metabolism and cerebral blood flow (1,2) . It is therefore unsurprising that a relationship has been shown to exist, in cross-sectional and prospective studies, between dietary consumption of vitamins and cognitive performance. Much of this research has focused on elderly populations, where positive relationships exist between cognitive performance and either dietary intake, or endogenous levels, of B vitamins (3 -5) and vitamins C and E (6 -8)

Memory improvements in elderly women following 16 weeks treatment with a combined multivitamin, mineral and herbal supplement

“…The most robust cognitive benefits were specific to the domain of working memory, providing support to the predictions of other researchers that measures of fluid intelligence may be responsive to treatment with vitamin formulations due to the role of these nutrients in the maintenance of CNS function and production of neurotransmitters relevant to memory function (Cockle et al 2000;Bryan et al 2002;Haskell et al 2008). Working memory represents an important component of fluid intelligence and growing evidence indicates that working memory may represent a cognitive domain which benefits preferentially from nutraceutical intervention (Pipingas et al 2008;Ryan et al 2008;MacReady et al 2011).…”

“…Similarly, Wolters et al (2005) did not identify any cognitive benefits of 6 months multivitamin treatment in elderly women. Again, cognitive assessment was restricted to estimates of verbal intelligence and symbol search, instruments which have been suggested to be less sensitive to subtle nutraceutical effects than computerized measures of attention or non-verbal memory (Haskell et al 2008). By contrast, recent investigations conducted in young to middle-aged adults have identified multivitamin related benefits on a computerized multitasking framework ) and a computerized mental subtraction task , indicating that computerized measures of fluid intelligence may be particularly responsive to the cognitive enhancing effects of multivitamins.…”

Multivitamin–Mineral and Vitamins (E + C) Supplementation Modulate Chronic Unpredictable Stress-Induced Oxidative Damage in Brain and Heart of Mice

“…In a recent epidemiologic study, telomere length which is a marker of biological aging was found to be enhanced in women on routine multivitamin supplement use [9]. MM also improves cognitive and mood effects in healthy children [10]. Supplementation with MM has been shown to be inversely associated with risk of myocardial infarction in men and women [11].…”

A randomised trial of nutrient supplements to minimise psychological stress after a natural disaster

“…For example, micronutrients act as cofactors in neurotransmitter synthesis and metabolism, where they can be rate-limiting factors (Ames et al, 2002). There are at least seven randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of B-Complex and combined mineral/vitamin formulations in which improvements in depression, anxiety and stress have been demonstrated (Carroll et al, 2000;Harris et al, 2011;Kennedy et al, 2010;Lewis et al, 2013;Long and Benton, 2013a;Rucklidge et al, 2012;Schlebusch et al, 2000) although not all trials using broadspectrum micronutrients have shown benefit for changing mood and anxiety (Cockle et al, 2000;Haskell et al, 2008Haskell et al, , 2010. However, all the negative trials were conducted on people who had no presenting psychological/psychiatric challenge.…”