Abstract
Antioxidant vitamins supplements have been suggested as a strategy to decrease the risk of age-related cataract development. However, the results from observational studies and interventional trials of associations between antioxidant vitamins A, C, and E and cataract development have been inconsistent. We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of multivitamin/mineral supplements for decreasing the risk of age-related cataracts by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis. In September 2013, we searched multiple databases to identify relevant studies including both cohort studies and randomized controlled trials (RCTs). A random-effects model was used to calculate the pooled relative risks (RR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI). Twelve prospective cohort studies and two RCTs were included. Pooled results from the cohort studies indicated that multivitamin/mineral supplements have a significant beneficial effect in decreasing the risk of nuclear cataracts (RR: 0.73; 95% CI: 0.64–0.82), cortical cataracts (RR: 0.81; 95% CI: 0.68–0.94), and any cataracts (RR: 0.66; 95% CI: 0.39–0.93). In addition, there were no decreases in the risk of posterior capsular cataracts (RR: 0.96; 95% CI: 0.72–1.20) or cataract surgery (RR: 1.00; 95% CI: 0.92–1.08). The two RCTs demonstrated that multivitamin/mineral supplements could decrease the risk of nuclear cataracts. There is sufficient evidence to support the role of dietary multivitamin/mineral supplements for the decreasing the risk of age-related cataracts.
Highlights
Age-related cataracts are the main cause of the loss of useful vision among the elderly population, with an estimated 16 million people affected worldwide [1]
Some large-scale cohort studies with a follow-up period of greater than 10 years revealed that a higher dietary intake of vitamin C, vitamin E, lutein/zeaxanthin, carotenoids, riboflavin, folate, niacin, and/or thiamine from food and supplements was associated with a decreased risk of cataract development [16,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26]
Some studies demonstrated that the long-term use of vitamins C, E, B12, or folate supplements alone could significantly decrease the risk of cataract development [10,14,19,27]
Summary
Age-related cataracts are the main cause of the loss of useful vision among the elderly population, with an estimated 16 million people affected worldwide [1]. Over the past two decades, many observational epidemiological studies have reported associations between diet and cataract development, for the antioxidant vitamins A, C, E, lutein, and zeaxanthin [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27] Both randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and a meta-analysis of these RCTs have found no evidence that supplementation with antioxidant vitamins (β-carotene, vitamin C, or vitamin E) prevents or slows the progression of age-related cataracts [28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38]
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