Don't stop taking your vitamins!

Public has been recently bombed by the results of the latest research study, which has put forth a notion that vitamins as such have an extremely unfavorable effect on people’s health, produce little or no beneficial effect, and are even highly dangerous to a certain extent. The supposedly “biased” and improper research study has been performed by a team of scientists, headed by a Serbian scientist and his team of colleagues at the Copenhagen University Hospital. He is the man behind the concept of vitamin meta-analysis, according to which and based on evidence there is a high probability that vitamin supplements are not only ineffective, but can harm one’s health to a such extent that it may indirectly lead to life threatening situations. Similar research studies performed in 2004 and 2007 and by the very same scientist, also pointed out to the potential ill effects of the vitamin supplements, but were not received heartily either, just like the study in question.

“Flaws”

What has a more in depth analysis of the study in question, apparently, showed are numerous downsides that seriously affect the plausibility of the study findings. What has been the most prominent remark in this regard is the fact that the team of scientists has allegedly omitted 405 research studies, which could have been taken into account as potentially illegible due to the fact that they had no account of any deaths, with additional 69 research studies excluded on the grounds they were not randomized and controlled research trials.

Deemed as the main complication and the problematic nature of such an approach in the analysis principle applied is the selection or rejection of the research studies arbitrary, that is to say that some do not fulfill the criteria set forth by scientists prior to the onset of the study itself. Also ignoring such variables as duration, i.e. the period of time that it took for a study to be completed (e.g. from 28 days all the way to 14 years), made the plausibility of the research study as such extremely questionable. Yet another minus side highlighted by the experts is the fact that in the study in question, the big difference in supplement dosage between different studies has not been regarded as an overtly important variable, such as variations in the amount of Vitamin E that can range from 10 to 5000 units on a daily basis.