Scientific researchers find funding in strange places, but support for clinical trials from Mars, a company best known for candy bars, has to be among the strangest. Pair it with support from the maker of a well-known brand of multivitamin, and you’ve got the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study, or COSMOS, intended to test the health effects of the seemingly disparate combination of cocoa extract and a multivitamin for seniors.
Touted as an “important partnership across academic, industry and government collaborators,” COSMOS is sited at two major academic research centers, the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Between them, groups at these institutions have assessed the value of cocoa extract (the Mars association) and Centrum Silver (the multivitamin association) separately and together in offering benefits against cancer and cardiovascular disease events and the effects of age on the brain.
Unfortunately for the chocolate aficionados out there (e.g., me), the cocoa extract studies have shown no effect on overall cardiovascular events and only a possible dent in some outcomes among those who stuck religiously to taking the supplements. Findings came up dry in terms of brain-boosting benefits, leaving us simply to continue enjoying chocolate for its own sake.
The branded multivitamin results have been more mixed. The supplement was not linked to increased risk for some cancers or for cardiovascular disease, which has been a concern, but benefits on these fronts were elusive.
Results for the brain are more promising. One set of findings from the COSMOS studies showed that for people in their 60s or older, taking the multivitamin was associated with better verbal recall at three years compared with those taking a placebo. The authors estimated that the benefit was equal to preventing just over three years’ worth of age-related memory loss.
The researchers assessed…
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