Moderate fish-oil supplementation reverses low-platelet, long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid status and reduces plasma triacylglycerol concentrations in British Indo-Asians.
What this study found
Moderate fish-oil supplementation improved lipid-related cardiovascular risk markers and enriched platelet long-chain n-3 status, with no significant ethnicity-by-treatment interaction overall. Compared with olive oil, the fish-oil group had reductions in fasting plasma triacylglycerol (P = 0.002), apo B-48 (P = 0.01), and increases in HDL cholesterol (P = 0.03), plasma alpha-tocopherol (P = 0.02), and platelet EPA (P = 0.0001) and DHA (P = 0.0001), with a decrease in platelet arachidonic acid (P = 0.0001). Indo-Asians showed a greater triglyceride reduction tendency than Europeans…
- Study & population
- Randomized, placebo-controlled intervention in healthy adult Europeans and Indo-Asian Sikhs from Reading and Slough, United Kingdom.
- Intervention
- Four 1 g oral fish-oil capsules daily for 12 weeks, taken with meals, providing 4.0 g fish oil in total including 1.5 g eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and 1.0 g docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) per day.
- Key limitation
- The intervention was short term (12 weeks) and relatively small, limiting precision and subgroup inference.
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Open PDFOriginal abstract
BACKGROUND The mechanisms involved in the increased mortality from coronary artery disease in British Indo-Asians are not well understood. OBJECTIVES This study aimed to investigate whether British Indo-Asian Sikhs have higher plasma triacylglycerol concentrations, lower platelet phospholipid levels, and lower dietary intakes of long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) than do age- and weight-matched Europeans and whether moderate dietary fish-oil intake can reverse these differences. DESIGN A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel, fish-oil intervention study was performed. After a 2-wk run-in period, 44 Europeans and 40 Indo-Asian Sikhs were randomly assigned to receive either 4.0 g fish oil [1.5 g eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and 1.0 g docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)] or 4.0 g olive oil (control) daily for 12 wk. RESULTS At baseline, the Indo-Asians had significantly higher plasma triacylglycerol, small dense LDL, apolipoprotein B, and dietary and platelet phospholipid n-6 PUFA values and significantly lower long-chain n-3 PUFAs (EPA and DHA) than did the Europeans. A significant decrease in plasma triacylglycerol, plasma apolipoprotein B-48, and platelet phospholipid arachidonic acid concentrations and a significant increase in plasma HDL concentrations and platelet phospholipid EPA and DHA levels were observed after fish-oil supplementation. No significant effect of ethnicity on the responses to fish-oil supplementation was observed. CONCLUSIONS Moderate fish-oil supplementation contributes to a reversal of lipid abnormalities and low n-3 PUFA levels in Indo-Asians and should be considered as an important, yet simple, dietary manipulation to reduce CAD risk in Indo-Asians with an atherogenic lipoprotein phenotype.