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Results on tests of memory in the short and long term than adults who did not take these vitamins, according to a study by the Australian National University, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition ‘. According to the author of this work Janine Walker, a researcher at the Australian National University, the benefits are modest but encouraging. In his view, vitamins “can have an important role in promoting healthy aging and mental health, as well as the maintenance of good cognitive functioning longer in a Community-wide scale.”

The researchers asked more than 700 people aged 60 to 74 who took a daily dose of folic acid and vitamin B12 or placebo pills instead seemed vitamins. The dose of vitamins include folic acid 400 micrograms and 100 micrograms of vitamin B12. Participants in the work they did not know what pills they were taking were.

Participants in this study showed symptoms of depression, but none had been diagnosed with clinical depression, the researchers said. Walker says he “saw that the largest with significant depressive symptoms were an important cohort to be addressed, given the evidence that depression in the last stage of life was associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment.”

After 12 months, seemed to be no differences between groups in how well these people scored in the mental tests, including memory, attention and speed. However, after two years, those who took vitamins showed greater, albeit modest, improvement in their scores on memory tasks.

For example, in a test of short-term memory, those who took a dummy pill improved their scores from 5.2 to 5.5 for two years. Those who took the vitamins increased their test scores of 5.16 to 5.6. The short-term memory is used, for example, to dial a number that someone just said, while the long-term memory comes into play when trying to call that number a day or a week later.

It is unclear how taking vitamins can work when you activate brain function and not all studies agree on its benefits. One idea is that vitamins reduce body levels of a molecule called homocistenia, which is linked to cardiovascular disease and poor cognitive function. The idea is that reducing homocysteine ??may, perhaps, reduce cardiovascular risk and in turn affect mental functioning. For Joshua Miller, a professor at the University of California, is difficult to translate improvements in memory tests benefits in real life, in which some people may have greater improvements in memory and other much smaller. “For each individual, may or may not have an effect,” he says.

“But at the population level, a small increase in cognitive function may have many ramifications in the actual functioning of the global population and the costs of health care,” he says. However, further tests will be needed in other patient groups but especially in those older than this study, may benefit from taking vitamins, says Walker.