COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study for the Mind

Identifying a safe, affordable, and well-tolerated intervention that prevents cognitive decline in older adults is of critical public health importance. There is compelling evidence from basic science, and small clinical studies that cocoa flavanols may protect cognitive function in older adults and reduce risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementia. Thus, this intervention could have important downstream benefits for health care utilization and cost, caregiver burden, and overall quality of life for older adults. Cocoa flavanol effects on cognition, however, need to be assessed in a definitive clinical trial.

The parent trial (COSMOS) will enroll 18,000 women and men nationwide, drawn from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) participant cohort and the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL) non-randomized respondent cohort, and will be conducted primarily by mail to assess whether high-potency cocoa flavanol extract and a multivitamin - alone or in combination - will reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer over 3 years of follow-up.

Once participants are enrolled in COSMOS, the study team at Brigham and Women's Hospital will provide contact information and other parent trial outcomes for COSMOS-Mind participants to the Wake Forest team using a secure web-based data transfer system. This seamless exchange of information between sites will permit timely accounting to ensure that the targeted demographics for enrollment are achieved (e.g. gender, age, race, ethnicity).

COSMOS-Mind will only be administered a telephone cognitive assessment to all participants at enrollment (baseline), and annually for 3 years of follow-up by trained and certified staff of the Wake Forest COSMOS-Mind team.