JAMA Network Open publishes observational study on topic JAMA published a meta-analysis of RCTs on: Why?
In 2018, the USPSTF recommended against healthy people taking a multivitamin in the pages of JAMA. That was based on a meta-analysis of 9 RCTs and 51k people finding null mortality outcomes (see top of the table).
Six years later JAMA Network Open published a study that no one wanted, and no one needed. It asked the SAME question that we have 9 RCTs for in an observational data set.
Here is what they find.
Wait, now MV not only don’t reduce mortality, they increase it? Could that be right?
Except that strikes me as implausible. It is possible that people who report taking daily MV in this cohort (the real inclusion criteria— not that they take it, but they are reporting taking it on a questionarre) are sicker than those who are not documented to take MV.
The authors allude to this in the limitations
Ultimately, we don’t know. As such, this non-randomized study adds nothing. I would be reluctant to conclude MV kill people based on it. I suspect the authors have some bias that they haven’t address. Moreover, their point estimate of death is outside the 95% CI of 9 RCTs with 51,000 people. That’s also odd.
But the big q is: what exactly is the point of publishing low credibility science on a topic with much better studies?
Why would JAMA network open take this paper— research funded by taxpayer money that didn’t even need to be done?
Ahh, I see clickbait!
Congrats on putting science first!
Sometimes mortality isn't the thing you're looking for, but just do you feel better? I used to think vitamin supplements were stupid, but when I started taking a couple of supplements to try to help my teeth, I found that Vitamin D + K2 helped the teeth stay noticably smoother, and the magnesium might not have had an effect on the teeth, but my heart arrythmia went from daily episodes to weekly, and now four years later, I don't have them any anymore. (The magnesium also made my periods more regular when I'd been seeing the signs of menopause - OOPS). I've also found that taking iodine has levelled my mood, and I don't yell at people right before bedtime anymore.
At this point, I'm on enough vitamins, that I started to think I should just take a multivitamin. That said, I think the advice of being able to adjust your vitamin levels individually makes sense to me, so I haven't....
These multivitamin studies are almost always dishonest. Did you notice the study funded by Pfizer to show their cheap, semi-toxic multivitamin (CENTRUM) all of a sudden can reduce risk for dementia?
Gee, I wonder how that miracle works. How come CENTRUM, Pfizer's multivitamin, suddenly works even though alternative medicine is a fake news right wing lie?
With these studies, they are never rigorous enough to show anything interesting (such as actually looking at specific compounds in the vitamin etc), and they're always a bad faith attempt to add one more belt notch to the propaganda line that "alternative medicine doesn't work", whatever that even means, which it doesn't. It's mostly word salad (what is alternative medicine? what is "work"? mortality, that's it?) It just is a power game played by people who are insecure about the ultimate nature of their careers (and many of these are funded in part by pharma companies attempting to discredit people taking simple measures to take care of themselves).