Fish oil cuts heart failure – study
This article was originally published in The Tan Sheet
Executive Summary
Supplementation with a single daily low-dose fish oil capsule in patients with chronic heart failure resulted in modest but clinically meaningful reductions in mortality and cardiovascular hospitalization in a 6,975-patient randomized, double-blind trial presented at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology. In the Italian study, patients with chronic heart failure received 1 g/day of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids - n-3 PUFA - in the form of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid or a placebo. Patients treated with the inexpensive n-3 PUFA had an adjusted nine percent relative risk reduction and suffered essentially no side-effects, according to Dr. Luigi Tavazzi, chair of the study's steering committee and cardiology professor at the University of Pavia, Italy. The same study also concluded rosuvastatin at 10 mg/day had no effect on mortality or hospital admission for cardiovascular events, suggesting that patients with chronic heart failure should not be started on statins