Effects of vitamin supplements on clinical cardiovascular outcomes: Time to move on! - A comprehensive review

Abstract

Background & aims: Vitamin supplementations have increasingly been advertised on media and reported to be widely used by the general public to improve cardiovascular health. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people have become more interested in ways to improve and maintain their health. Increased awareness of people on healthy lifestyle is translating into inquisition regarding dietary supplements.

Aim: First, focus on the most commonly used vitamin supplements and comprehensively review the evidence for and against recommending them to patients to improve and/or maintain cardiovascular health. Second, illustrate how the interest in studies shifted over time from Vitamin A, E, C, and B to Vitamin D and observational studies led to randomized controlled trials.

Methods: A thorough PubMed search with the phrase: "Vitamin supplements and cardiovascular health" was performed. In the present review, focus was maintained on the evidence for the use of vitamin supplements in the prevention of major cardiovascular events and/or the maintenance of cardiovascular health by comprehensively reviewing all previous studies indexed in PubMed. Studies with clinical 'hard' end-points were included only.

Results: A total of 87 studies met the inclusion criteria and were reviewed in the present article. High-quality evidence suggesting benefits for the use of vitamin supplements to maintain or improve cardiovascular health in people is minimal to non-existent.

Conclusions: Vitamin supplementation does not improve clinical cardiovascular outcomes in general population. Counseling on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle with adequate and nutritious food intake seems more appropriate to improve and maintain cardiovascular health.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cardiovascular health; Clinical outcomes; Dietary supplements; Vitamin D; Vitamin supplementation.

Fig. 1

Chart of inclusion/exclusion criteria.

Fig. 2

Line graph showing the publication trend for each vitamin supplementation article by years.