Health value of Omega‑3 supplements is increasingly questioned

More Evi­dence That Omega‑3 Sup­ple­ments Don’t Work (Forbes):
“Once again researchers have failed to find any clin­i­cal ben­e­fit for omega‑3 sup­ple­ments. In a new meta-analy­sis and sys­tem­at­ic review pub­lished in JAMA, Evan­ge­los Rizos and col­leagues ana­lyzed 20 ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­als includ­ing 68,680 patients and found no sig­nif­i­cant effect on any of the endpoints…Although ear­ly stud­ies sug­gest­ed a ben­e­fit for omega‑3 sup­ple­ments, the accu­mu­la­tion of evi­dence has result­ed in a con­sis­tent fail­ure to con­firm this ben­e­fit, accord­ing to the authors. Cur­rent evi­dence, they con­clud­ed, does “not jus­ti­fy the use of omega‑3 as a struc­tured inter­ven­tion in every­day clin­i­cal prac­tice or guide­lines sup­port­ing dietary omega‑3 PUFA administration.”

Study: Asso­ci­a­tion Between Omega‑3 Fat­ty Acid Sup­ple­men­ta­tion and Risk of Major Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Dis­ease Events (JAMA):

• Study Selec­tion: Ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­als eval­u­at­ing the effect of omega‑3 on all-cause mor­tal­i­ty, car­diac death, sud­den death, myocar­dial infarc­tion, and stroke.
• Con­clu­sion: Over­all, omega‑3 PUFA sup­ple­men­ta­tion was not asso­ci­at­ed with a low­er risk of all-cause mor­tal­i­ty, car­diac death, sud­den death, myocar­dial infarc­tion, or stroke based on rel­a­tive and absolute mea­sures of association.

To Learn More:

• Nutri­tion and sup­ple­ments (DHEA, Gink­go Bilo­ba, Omega‑3): sep­a­rat­ing myth from fact

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