Omega-3 Fatty Acids Don’t Protect Heart Patients

Category Health | Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Most heart patients who take low-dose omega-3 fatty acid supplements don’t appear to gain any additional protection against further cardiac trouble, new Dutch research cautions.

In fact, neither low doses of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), which are found in fish oil, nor of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), derived from nuts and several vegetable oils, provided any benefit to the vast majority of heart patients, the study showed.

The scientists focused on patients who were already taking medications to control blood pressure, cholesterol and potential clotting. So, the researchers theorized that the poor performance of the supplements may simply reflect the overwhelming power of the medications.
Study author Daan Kromhout, from the division of human nutrition at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, is to present the findings Sunday at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Stockholm; the study will appear online in the New England Journal of Medicine simultaneously.

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