A recent study from the Karolinska Institutet published in the journal Circulation suggests that people with a family history of cardiovascular disease may benefit from increasing their intake of oily fish. Oily fish such as salmon, mackerel, herring and sardines are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, especially eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).
These essential fatty acids are essential for various functions in the human body, but cannot be synthesized by the body and must be obtained through diet. Research continues to emphasize the importance of Omega-3s in everyone's diet.
Now, a large international study suggests it may be particularly important for people with a family history of cardiovascular disease. The cardiovascular diseases studied by the researchers include fatal and nonfatal coronary heart disease, such as unstable angina, heart attack and cardiac arrest, and cerebral infarction (stroke).
"Cardiovascular disease is partly heritable, as twin studies have shown, but it is difficult to identify the controlling genes," said Karin Leander, senior lecturer in the Cardiovascular and Nutritional Epidemiology Group and associate professor of epidemiology at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institute, who led the study. "So a strong hypothesis is that cardiovascular disease is a combination of genetics and environment."
So she and her research colleagues looked at the impact of the interaction between family history and dietary intake. For the study, they pooled data from more than 40,000 patients without cardiovascular disease.
During the follow-up period, nearly 8,000 of them developed cardiovascular disease. In the analysis, the researchers found that people who have close relatives, such as parents or siblings, who have cardiovascular disease and who have low levels of the omega-3 fatty acids EPA/DHA have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease by more than 40%. And those who had cardiovascular disease in "only" immediate relatives had a 25% increased risk.
"This study shows that people with a family history of cardiovascular disease benefit more from eating more oily fish than others," Karin-Leander said.
EPA/DHA levels were measured in all study participants, and since these fatty acids are not produced in the body, these levels are a reliable measure of dietary intake of oily fish.
Measurements of fatty acids in blood and tissue are objective, which is an important advantage compared with self-reported dietary habit data. Although this was an observational study, these findings represent entirely new knowledge in a field that already has a large number of randomized clinical trials.
Compiled from /scitechdaily