{"id":31749,"date":"2012-09-11T16:00:42","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T20:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&#038;p=31749"},"modified":"2012-09-11T16:25:57","modified_gmt":"2012-09-11T20:25:57","slug":"more-evidence-that-omega-3-supplements-dont-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2012\/09\/11\/more-evidence-that-omega-3-supplements-dont-work\/","title":{"rendered":"More Evidence That Omega-3 Supplements Don&#8217;t Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Once again researchers have failed to find any clinical benefit for omega-3 supplements. In a new<a href=\"http:\/\/jama.jamanetwork.com\/article.aspx?articleid=1357266\"> meta-analysis and systematic review<\/a> published in\u00a0<em>JAMA<\/em>, Evangelos Rizos and colleagues\u00a0analyzed 20 randomized controlled trials including \u00a068,680 patients and found no significant effect on any of the endpoints:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>all-cause mortality: relative risk (RR) 0.96, CI 0.91 &#8211; 1.02<\/li>\n<li>cardiac death: RR 0.91, CI 0.85 &#8211; 0.98 (not significant after correction for multiple comparisons)<\/li>\n<li>sudden death: RR 0.87, CI 0.75 &#8211; 1.01<\/li>\n<li>MI: RR 0.89, CI 0.76 &#8211; 1.04<\/li>\n<li>stroke: RR 1.05, CI 0.93 &#8211; 1.18<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The authors report that they found no evidence supporting a beneficial effect related to either lowering triglycerides or reducing sudden death. Regarding triglycerides, they write,\u00a0&#8220;the proposed protective role of omega-3 PUFAs by lowering triglyceride levels is not supported by our study, because our findings do not support an advantage of higher (triglyceride-lowering) doses compared with lower doses of omega-3.&#8221; In addition, no benefit was found in preventing sudden death,\u00a0&#8220;thus rejecting a distinct antiarrhythmic mediated omega-3 PUFA effect,&#8221; although the authors acknowledge that the evidence was &#8220;underpowered to detect a small underlying effect.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>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 conclude, does\u00a0&#8220;not justify the use of omega-3 as a structured intervention in everyday clinical practice or guidelines supporting dietary omega-3 PUFA administration.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once again researchers have failed to find any clinical benefit for omega-3 supplements. In a new meta-analysis and systematic review published in\u00a0JAMA, Evangelos Rizos and colleagues\u00a0analyzed 20 randomized controlled trials including \u00a068,680 patients and found no significant effect on any of the endpoints: all-cause mortality: relative risk (RR) 0.96, CI 0.91 &#8211; 1.02 cardiac death: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[559,558,254],"class_list":["post-31749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prevention","tag-fish-oils","tag-omega-3","tag-supplements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}