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Vitamin D And Fish Oil Supplements Disappoint In Long-Awaited Study Results
Many people routinely take nutritional supplements such as vitamin D and fish oil in the hopes of staving off major killers like cancer and heart disease.
But the evidence about the possible benefits of the supplements has been mixed.
Now, long-awaited government-funded research has produced some of the clearest evidence yet about the usefulness of taking the supplements. And the results — published in two papers — are disappointing.
"Both trials were negative," says Dr. Lawrence Fine, chief of the clinical application and prevention branch of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the studies.
"Overall, they showed that neither fish oil nor vitamin D actually lowered the incidence of heart disease or cancer," Fine says.
The results were presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Chicago and released online Saturday by the New England Journal of Medicine. One paper focused on vitamin D supplementation and the other focused on fish oil.
The trials involved nearly 26,000 healthy adults age 50 and older with no history of cancer or heart disease who took part in the VITAL research project. Twenty percent of the participants were African-American.
Some of the participants took either 1 gram of fish oil — which contains omega-3 fatty acids — plus 2,000 international units of vitamin D daily. Others consumed the same dose of vitamin D plus a placebo, while others ingested the same dose of fish oil plus a placebo. The last group took two placebos. After more than five years, researchers were unable to find any overall benefit.
While the overall results were disappointing, there appeared to be a beneficial effect when it came to one aspect of heart disease and fish oil: heart attacks.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday November 12 2018, @12:33PM (2 children)
1) Fish oil industry exists because you can't aquaculture salmon in pens without supplementation of fish oil, and why not divert a small amount of the oil stream to humans if possible at a higher profit cause why not? The surplus is enough for supplements but not enough to fry french fries and tendies in at restaurants (or make biodiesel out of). Just saying there's economic reasons fish oil supplements for humans will never go away regardless of medical need.
2) I'm kinda surprised at the details in that it takes 40 years of abuse to kill a heart so treatment after age 50 is much like the life long cig smokers I see at the gym trying to make up for half a century of smoking by 15 minutes on the treadmill a couple times until they give up. Or, once I'm a senior citizen I'm thinking of trying tobacco or even the devil's lettuce because if I'm gonna die in 20 years regardless and lung cancer would take 50 years to kill me, I think it'll be OK. I'm just saying the proposed fix that fish oil supposedly applies to was not tested. Clearly its not a magic potion, but I was under the impression (by people selling the stuff) that it was never a magic potion but if you take a pill for 70 years then you'll be much less likely to eventually die over an entire lifetime.
I guess the best SN automobile analogy would be advertising that synthetic oils make engines last longer because of better lubricity at cold starts, so supplement the entire life of an engine, from new to scrap, with synthetic oils and it'll last longer on average. Then "disproving it" by using it for a relatively short time in several heavily worn 200K+ mile cars that already have ruined piston rings, and then pointing out that there's no overall difference in outcome so obviously using it for 15 winters in a snowblower could never have any effect.
Or rephrased, five years of repair work, at least the repair work fish oil is capable of, can't fix 50+ years of abuse. Of course maybe it can't do repair work and all and only slightly prevents future damage...
I would say its an accurate study in that it seems to prove no acute effects of fish oil; if you have a heart attack and don't want another, its already too late to take a magic fish oil pill and be cured, don't bother. Or its not a replacement for clot dissolving heart attack meds. But I think they already knew that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12 2018, @01:51PM
Please do. You may note that cancer is not the most important problem when it comes to smoking and quality of life issues. YYMV.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday November 12 2018, @03:16PM
And you might find that it will take considerably less than 50 years for cancer to take hold in any event, but also fail to consider that as one ages one's ability to develop cancer is significantly more as well because aging, plus one didn't expose oneself back when the body was able to better learn how to mount defenses. And you might live to 120. In any event, quitting smoking after a heart attack [heartfoundation.org.nz] has been shown to have beneficial effect.
It wouldn't surprise me to someday find science either tells us there are hidden subfactors (i.e. why the fish oil helps after a heart attack but apparently not before), or that the commitment to fish oil and other supplements isn't a magic pill but since the mind has determined to engage in what it believes is healthier behaviors that the body responds with its' own actions which improve health. An expectation effect [cancer.org] which actually triggers change, perhaps. (Or perhaps not....)
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