Fish oil heals the heart after heart attack

by Stepy — August 9, 2016

Fish oil heals the heart after heart attack, according to an exciting new study from the American Heart Association.

According to the researchers, giving heart attack patients high dose of omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil, everyday for six months significantly improved heart function and reduced scarring.

The shape and function of the heart can be affected by a heart attack, which can eventually lead to heart failure. There are very few therapies that can reverse these post-heart attack changes.

“Heart failure is still a major problem after a heart attack despite all the therapy we have and the advances in interventional care,” said Raymond Y. Kwong, M.D., M.P.H., senior author of the study and director of Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. “Our findings show that omega-3 fatty acids are a safe and effective treatment in improving cardiac remodeling, so it may be promising in reducing the incidence of heart failure or death, which are still major healthcare burdens to patients who suffer a heart attack.”

The study abstract provided the following results:

By intention-to-treat analysis, patients randomly assigned to omega-3 fatty acids experienced a significant reduction of left ventricular systolic volume index (–5.8%, P=0.017), and noninfarct myocardial fibrosis (–5.6%, P=0.026) in comparison with placebo. Per-protocol analysis revealed that those patients who achieved the highest quartile increase in red blood cell omega-3 index experienced a 13% reduction in left ventricular systolic volume index in comparison with the lowest quartile. In addition, patients in the omega-3 fatty acid arm underwent significant reductions in serum biomarkers of systemic and vascular inflammation and myocardial fibrosis. There were no adverse events associated with high-dose omega-3 fatty acid therapy.

Researchers noted that the omega-3 fatty acids helped the heart contract better, and reduced fibrosis, which is scarring, in the areas of the heart that were undamaged.

The study showing that fish oil heals the heart after heart attack was published in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation.

The study was funded by The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

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