Effects of a multi-vitamin/mineral supplement on cognitive function and fatigue during extended multi-tasking.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Minerals and Vitamins in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The current study investigated the effect of supplementation with a multi-vitamin/mineral on fatigue and cognitive function in healthy females.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, women only.

Participants attended the laboratory before and 9 weeks after commencing treatment.

During both visits cognitive function and the modulation of task related mood/fatigue were assessed in two discrete 20-min assessment periods during which participants completed a four-module version of the Multi-Tasking Framework.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and parallel-group study.

Because people in this Minerals study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Minerals, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Minerals could be set against what happens without it.

Groups ran in parallel: each of the participants stayed in one arm throughout.

In this placebo-controlled, double blind, randomized, parallel groups trial the effect of a multi-vitamin/mineral (Supradyn) was assessed in 216 females aged 25-50 years.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Affect, Cognition, Dietary Supplements, Drug Combinations, Fatigue, Minerals and Organic Chemicals.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Minerals and Vitamins.

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2010 (Human psychopharmacology), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.