Mental health literacy, folic acid and vitamin B12, and physical activity for the prevention of depression in older adults: randomised controlled trial

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Who Took Part

The study group was 909 adults.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

The initial target sample size was 2000; however, only 909 adults (60-74 years) met the study criteria.

The main outcome was depressive symptoms on the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) at 6 weeks, 6, 12 and 24 months.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and placebo-controlled.

The adults were allocated by chance, so the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) could be set against what happens without it.

Interventions were delivered by mail with telephone calls.

The Clinicaltrials.gov registration number is NCT00214682.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Depression, Dietary Supplements, Drug Combinations, Folic Acid, Health Education, Mental Health and Motor Activity.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) in 909 adults.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2010 (The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science), a journal based in England.

More context: the Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) compound page, all human trials.