Daily Multivitamin Slows Biological Aging By 4 Months, Study Finds
A daily Centrum Silver multivitamin measurably slowed biological aging markers in nearly 1,000 older adults over two years, per a landmark Nature Medicine study.
In a medicine cabinet somewhere in America sits a pill that costs less than a dollar a day. For two years, researchers watched what happened when nearly 1,000 older adults took it. The result caught them off guard: their biological aging slowed — modestly, but measurably.
A daily Centrum Silver multivitamin reduced biological aging markers by roughly four months over two years in healthy older adults, according to research published Tuesday in Nature Medicine. The study stands as the most credible evidence to date that a basic over-the-counter supplement may influence aging at the molecular level.
Epigenetic clocks measure chemical modifications to DNA that accumulate with age, reflecting the body's biological trajectory independent of calendar years. Second-generation versions — PCGrimAge and PCPhenoAge, both of which showed effects in this trial — are calibrated to predict mortality risk and have proven reliable in previous aging research.
The analysis drew from the COSMOS randomized clinical trial, which enrolled 958 participants averaging 70 years old. Participants took either a daily multivitamin or a placebo, with blood samples analyzed at baseline, year one, and year two. The randomized, placebo-controlled design grounds the finding in credible science rather than observational speculation.
The multivitamin reduced the rate of PCGrimAge increase by 0.113 years per year, while PCPhenoAge slowed by 0.214 years per year. Both effects reached statistical significance, and together they translated to roughly four months less biological aging over two years.
The effect hit hardest in participants whose biological age already outpaced their chronological age at the study's start. Those with accelerated aging showed a PCGrimAge effect of minus 0.236 years per year, compared with minus 0.013 in participants aging at a normal or slower rate — a statistically significant gap suggesting multivitamins may benefit most the people who need them most.
"There is a lot of interest today in identifying ways to not just live longer, but to live better," said Howard D. Sesso, ScD, MPH, senior author and associate director of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Mass General Brigham. "It was exciting to see benefits of a multivitamin linked with markers of biological aging."
Epigenetic clocks are in some ways ideal endpoints for interventions like multivitamin supplementation because multivitamins are not meant to aid in improving any one specific health outcome, said Daniel W. Belsky, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and inventor of the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock. Instead, epigenetic clocks capture subtle improvements across a range of possible outcomes.
What researchers still need to establish, Belsky said, is whether people whose epigenetic clocks respond to multivitamins — or any similar intervention — actually gain a corresponding improvement in real-world healthspan.
This is the latest finding from COSMOS, which published cognitive substudies in 2024 showing multivitamin supplementation improved memory and slowed cognitive aging by the equivalent of two years. The epigenetic results may represent one thread in a broader pattern of multivitamin benefits in aging — a pattern still being stitched together.
Independent experts say the finding warrants interest but caution against overstatement. The multivitamin produced small favorable changes in two epigenetic aging markers, but not across all clocks measured. "That makes the finding interesting, but it is still far from showing that multivitamins broadly slow aging or improve longevity," said José Ordovás, PhD, professor of nutrition and genetics at Tufts University, who had no involvement in the study.
The magnitude of the observed differences was modest, and their clinical significance remains uncertain, said Zachary Clayton, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz, who also was not involved in the research.
Researchers do not yet know why multivitamins appear to influence biological aging markers. One possible explanation: multivitamins may be correcting subtle nutrient insufficiencies that quietly undermine cellular processes tied to aging — among them inflammation, oxidative stress, and DNA repair.
What remains unknown is whether the effect persists after supplementation stops, whether it translates to a longer healthspan, and what mechanisms drive it. The authors plan to investigate whether the slowing of biological aging outlasts the trial itself.
The study received funding from National Institutes of Health grants and investigator-initiated grants from Mars Edge, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, and FOXO Technologies. Mars Edge and Haleon, formerly Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, supplied the Centrum Silver pills and placebo capsules used in the trial.
For roughly the price of a daily cup of coffee, an ordinary pill is raising questions that expensive pharmaceutical pipelines have long struggled to answer — what, exactly, does it mean to age well, and can something this simple quietly shift the odds.