Doctors often recommend Omega-3s to help patients lower their cholesterol and improve heart health.
Those Omega-3s can come from fatty fish like salmon and mackerel, or supplements that often contain a combination of the acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).
In a new study from the Intermountain Healthcare Heart Institute in Salt Lake City, researchers found that higher EPA blood levels alone lowered the risk of heart disease and death.
However, DHA blunted the heart benefits of EPA. Higher DHA levels at any level of EPA worsened health outcomes.
In the study, the team examined nearly 1,000 patients over a 10-year-period. In their blood samples, the circulating levels of EPA and DHA in their blood was measured.
Researchers then tracked major cardiac adverse events, which included heart attack, stroke, heart failure requiring hospitalization or death.
They found that patients with the highest levels of EPA had a reduced risk of major heart events. When evaluating how EPA and DHA affect one another, they found that higher DHA blunts the benefit of EPA.
In particular, they also found that those patients with higher levels of DHA than EPA, were more at risk for heart problems.
The team says that not all Omega-3s are alike, and that EPA and DHA combined together, as they often are in supplements, may void the benefits that patients and their doctors hope to achieve.
Based on these and other findings, doctors can still tell patients to eat Omega-3 rich foods, but they should not be recommending them in pill form as supplements or even as combined (EPA + DHA) prescription products.
These results raise further concerns about the use of combined EPA/DHA, particularly through supplements.
If you care about heart health and nutrition, please read studies about after heart attack: Late dinner and no breakfast can be a killer combination and findings of this healthy food may lower heart attack, stroke risk.
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The study was presented at the 2021 American College of Cardiology’s Scientific Session. One author of the study is Viet T. Le, MPAS, PA.
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