Fish oil 'doesn’t cut heart disease risk'

Researchers have found that supplementation with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids is not associated with a lower risk of all-cause death, cardiac death, sudden death, heart attack or stroke.

Evangelos C Rizos and colleagues from the University Hospital of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece, performed a large-scale synthesis of the available randomized evidence on 70,000 patients by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine the association between omega-3 PUFAs and major cardiovascular outcomes.

Of the 3,635 citations retrieved, 20 studies with 68,680 randomized patients were included, reporting 7,044 deaths, 3,993 cardiac deaths, 1,150 sudden deaths, 1,837 heart attacks, and 1,490 strokes.

Analysis indicated no statistically significant association with all-cause mortality, cardiac death, sudden death, heart attack, and stroke when all supplement studies were considered.

“In conclusion, omega-3 PUFAs are not statistically significantly associated with major cardiovascular outcomes across various patient populations. Our findings do not justify the use of omega-3 as a structured intervention in everyday clinical practice or guidelines supporting dietary omega-3 PUFA administration,” the authors said.

“Randomized evidence will continue to accumulate in the field, yet an individual patient data meta-analysis would be more appropriate to refine possible associations related to, among others, dose, adherence, baseline intake, and cardiovascular disease risk group,” they added.

The study has been recently published in JAMA.