Omega-3 Fatty Acids of No Benefit in Multiple Sclerosis
This came as a real surprise to me. I have been faithfully dosing myself with my Omega 3 for years now… Sigh, all that money (and all those fishy burps) I could have saved myself!
Belinda
Hi Belinda,
That site appears to be registration only (Or am I having a weird problem with Chrome again?)
I’ve been doing the fish-oil too, since even before I got a confirmed diagnosis. The stupid thing is, I’ll probably keep going now, even if it’s been shown to have no benefit. How crazy is that?
I haven’t had a relapse for quite some time. As I reckon I had MS for years before it was diagnosed, it could well be that I’m SPMS by now. But I’m scared to tamper with anything I’m taking now, just in case, somewhere in the cocktail, is the thing that’s doing the trick!
I reckon I could probably stop the lot, and not be any worse off healthwise, and a little bit better financially. But I’m reluctant to tempt fate.
T.
x
Hmmm, no idea why the link isn’t working for you, Tina. It works for me when clicked on it from here and I use Chrome too.
But in case others are having trouble with the link I have copied and pasted the article
April 19, 2012 — Omega-3 fatty acid supplements failed to reduce disease activity in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS), either as monotherapy or in combination with standard immunomodulatory treatment, according to new results of a randomized placebo-controlled trial.
The finding, from the 4-year Omega-3 Fatty Acid Treatment in Multiple Sclerosis (OFAMS) trial, goes against those of preliminary studies that suggested omega-3 supplementation would have a protective effect in MS, lead author Øivind Torkildsen, MD, PhD, from Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway, told Medscape Medical News.
“It has been estimated that about a third of all MS patients are using or have tried supplementation with omega-3 to control disease progression and neurologists have traditionally recommended omega-3 supplementation to their MS patients,” Dr. Torkildsen said. “Although this is the most commonly used and recommended complementary treatment for MS, there have not been any randomized controlled studies to document if omega-3 actually has an effect on MS disease activity.”
The OFAMS results were published online April 16 in the Archives of Neurology .
The study was conducted in 13 public neurology departments in Norway from 2004 to 2008 and included 92 patients with active relapsing-remitting MS with a disability score of 5.0 or less on the Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale.
Dr. Torkildsen and his team randomly assigned 46 patients to receive oral omega-3 fatty acids in the form of 1350 mg of eicosapentaenoic acid and 850 mg of docosahexaenoic acid daily, and 46 patients to receive placebo.
After 6 months, all patients additionally received subcutaneous injections of 44 µg interferon beta-1a 3 times per week for another 18 months.
They were followed for 2 years with repeated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure disease activity according to the number of new T1-weighted gadolinium-enhancing lesions in the brain. Relapse rate, disability progression, fatigue, quality of life, and safety were also measured.
Throughout this time, no positive effect of omega-3 supplementation on any of the measured disease variables was found.
The cumulative number of gadolinium-enhancing MRI lesions during the first 6 months was similar in the omega-3 fatty acids and placebo groups (median difference, 1; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0 - 3; P = .09).
Similarly, there was no difference in relapse rate (median difference after 6 months, 0; 95% CI, 0 - 0; P = .54; median difference after 24 months, 0; 95% CI, 0 - 0; P = .72).
Seventy percent of patients in both study groups had no disability progression (P > .99), and no differences were detected in fatigue or quality-of-life scores. No safety concerns were associated with omega-3 fatty acid treatment. Supplementation did not interfere with interferon-beta treatment.
Findings a Surprise
Dr. Torkildsen admitted he and his group were surprised by the study findings, given preclinical results that suggested a positive effect with omega-3 supplementation. “This shows how important it is to perform controlled studies,” he said.
“We hope this study will offer physicians a better basis for giving their patients evidence-based advice on dietary modification in MS. I think doctors should tell their patients that there is no evidence for a positive effect of omega-3 supplementation in MS,” Dr. Torkildsen added.
But there is emerging evidence of benefit with vitamin D, he said. “Many sources of omega-3 also contain vitamin D and there is growing evidence that vitamin D supplementation could have a positive effect on MS disease activity.”
Commenting on this study for Medscape Medical News, Daniel Kantor, MD, president of the Florida Society of Neurology and the medical director of Neurologique, an organization dedicated to patient-centered care, research, and education in Jacksonville, said the paper was important because many patients with MS are taking supplements without much evidence for their benefit and their potential for harm.
“As neurologists, it is incumbent on us to be familiar with the state of the evidence for various complementary medications,” Dr. Kantor, who was not part of the study, said in an interview.
“In this well-designed trial, omega-3 supplementation was not found to be beneficial alone for the first 6 months or in combination with beta-interferon 1a for the remainder of the 2 years,” he said.
“There are, however, interesting trends, but not statistically significant. Curiously, the group originally treated with placebo had less gadolinium-enhancing lesions than the omega-3 group, but the opposite was true in terms of T1 hypointensities or black holes. This mismatch could suggest the possibility that omega-3 is actually harmful in terms of inflammation but protective in terms of neurodegeneration,” Dr. Kantor said.
This highlights the need for actually studying supplements because they may not always be beneficial, he added.
“In terms of other potential benefits of omega-3 supplementation, there were less people with myalgias in the treated group than the placebo group. This may suggest that there is a role for omega-3 in reducing muscle pains, and potentially in reducing the side effects of interferon beta-1a,” he suggested.
The study was funded by the Western Norway Regional Health Authority, Norwegian Multiple Sclerosis Society, Pronova Biocare, Amersham Health, Norway, and Merck Serono, Norway. Dr. Torkildsen reports financial relationships with Merck-Serono, Novartis, and Biogen Idec.
Arch Neurol. Published online April 16, 2012. Abstract
B
Thanks for pasting.
The link does seem to work (i.e. not just dead), but the page I get to wants a username and password, which is odd.
Several times this week, I’ve not been able to access the full content of links people posted. I do get to the right site, but seemingly not always to the correct page of it, or some of the pages are missing.
I’ve only recently gone over to Chrome, and thought it was OK at first, but am now starting to notice some annoying glitches.
All this talk about supplements: I’m sitting here wondering why I feel so rubbish tonight, and I’ve realised I took the vitamins, but forgot the prescription thing I know DOES help - my Baclofen! I’ve been sitting here slowly getting worse and worse cramp, with no recognition I’d forgotten to take anything. Doh!
T.
x
Oh no.
Fish supplements can’t be doing any harm and are probably good for general health so I’ll probably carry on taking them.
Hi all,
I suppose this applies to my flaxseed oil caps I’ve been taking for years? Never mind, Omega 3 has a lot of other benefits for my health so I will continue to take them until another study decides they’ve got no flippin benefits for anything apart from the pockets of the manufacturers who are raking it in from all of us.
I’m with Anitra on this one, I’m too scared to tip the scales with the cocktail.
Suex
Hiya
Last year when I had my yearly check up with the MS nurse, he told me I should be taking vitamin D and Omega 3 everyday. I’d remembered reading something that said that Omega 3 hadn’t shown any benefits for people with MS (can’t remember where). I said this to him and he said that as far as he knew it did help and therefore I should take it (said in a tone that made me feel like a 5 year old!). He also gave me the dosage written on a bit of paper.
When I went to Boots to get them, I couldn’t see the Omega 3 at the dosage he’d said so I asked the pharmasist. She had a look on the computer and said they don’t do them at that dose and asked me who had told me to take them. She then rang the ‘drug people that know everything’ she came back and said that they had told her that Omega 3 hasn’t shown any benefit for people with MS and therefore she advised that as long as I had a healthy diet which included oily fish (as is standard for everyone), not to bother with the capsules and just go with the vitamin D tablets.
Sue
x
It’s not unusual to get conflicting studies about the same thing.
As this was only a small trial, and Omega 3 supplements are relatively inexpensive, and probably have general health benefits anyway (especially for people like me, who hardly eat fish), I’ll keep going with them.
If wider studies confirm the findings, or even find (perish the thought!) that Omega 3 supplements might be harmful, I’ll think again. But for the moment, I’m not going to abandon long term habits on the basis of one study of 92 people.
I’m not criticising the study - or Belinda for posting it. It’s “interesting”, but not enough to make me ditch the supplements, until we learn more.
Tina
This highlights yet again the problem with studies into alternate and complementary medicine.
This study says something slightly different to previous studies, this probably negates any current studies being used to determine if from a clinical trials view point there is or is not any benefit.
The larger studies that probably would be desirable are most unlikely to ever be financed.
All this proves is that the souse of evidence when considering such treatments must come from somewhere else other than standard medical doctors because by their standards they just do not have the evidence to say anything good or bad.
That then opens the can of worms as to what are reliable other sources of information
I had the same problem as Tina - first you have to log in. Since an account is free, I will probably sign up anyway.
I have one thought about Omega-3 - if it has a general benefit, and alleviates some other problem, and makes you feel “better”, then you have one less problem to contend with, and that makes it easier (perhaps) to cope with the MS. Sound like a good thing to me. But then, I like fish anyway.
Geoff
I eat salmon at least once a week and eat tuna or another fish once or twice a week too so I reckon I am probably getting enough Omega 3 (and 6) from them for general health benefits so I think I will dispense with the capsules of concentrated burps.
And here is a related study that is food for thought (sorry, bad pun). I’ll paste it too as I realized why the link wasn’t working for you guys. Erhum, I am a member so it takes me straight there but yep, you’ll have to sign in. Sorry…
By Kerry Grens
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Sep 29 - Despite some evidence that taking fish oil pills during pregnancy can help children’s brain development, a new study suggests that the supplements make no difference in measures of intellect when the kids are six years old.
The findings support the results of an earlier Norwegian study that also found no differences in IQ among seven-year-olds whose mothers did or did not take fish oil supplements while pregnant and breastfeeding.
In the current experiment, researchers asked expectant mothers during the second half of their pregnancies to take fish oil, fish oil plus a folate supplement, folate alone or a placebo.
Nearly seven years later, the team, led by Dr. Cristina Campoy at the University of Granada in Spain, gave intelligence tests to 154 children from this group.
The kids performed similarly on the tests, regardless of what type of pill their mothers had taken during pregnancy.
The results, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, do not mean that fatty acids like docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) are not important.
In fact, the researchers found that the children of women who had high levels of DHA in their red blood cells around the time they gave birth scored above average on the intelligence tests at age six.
These mothers, however, were not necessarily given fish oil supplements. Rather, the result could reflect mothers’ intake of DHA from various sources over a longer period of time, and might mean that long term fatty acid intake “is more beneficial than receiving supplementation alone during pregnancy,” the authors wrote in their study.
A recent study in Australia also found that DHA supplements did not help the visual development of babies (see Reuters Health story of May 26, 2011).
The current study did not measure the diets of the children, something that could have influenced the results, said Dr. Ingrid Helland at Oslo University Hospital, who led the earlier Norwegian research.
“It might be that subtle beneficial effects of (prenatal fish oil) supplementation are being overshadowed by other factors (genetics, social stimulation, nutrition etc),” Dr. Helland wrote in an email to Reuters Health.
She is not totally giving up on the idea that taking fish oil might be beneficial.
“If a friend would ask me if she should take supplements or not, I would recommend supplementation, but emphasize that we still do not have any scientific proof that it benefits the child,” said Dr. Helland.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/nW3xdX
Am J Clin Nutr, 2011.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/750689
Interestingly Tina my first thought was that it was quite a small sample size too but given the number of years it was run over that does increase the statistical validity of it. So for now I’ll trust the results and cross my fingers. I wasn’t absolutely religious about taking my supplements anyway unlike my Vit D3 tablets. Now those ones I will never skip…
Cheers,
Belinda
Well I developed neuropathic itch around my chest and tummy area. Gp advised me to take Evening Primrose oil as Id previously been taking fish oil supplements.
All I can say is it seems to work for me taking the supplements. Itching stopped and Im much calmer, although added Baclofen to the mix too.
I reckon if we feel something is working then keep taking the pills. As a child we were always given cod liver oil for winter months, because back in the 50’s public health issued idicts stating it helped with bone development (added vit.d) and helped stave off colds! Im all for the old remedies as most are now being found to have some truth in their message.
Im continuing, and my vit.d3 levels are increasing, making my osteo nurse very happy!
bren
x
Hi, I`ve been taking omega 3 for quite a while. I was told to do this by my reflexologist. She noticed how dry my skin was and said take omega 3 and moisturise yourself from the inside out.
My carer moisturisers my feet and legs everyday, so I cant really say if its working. But I`ll carry on buying them from the £ shop.
luv Pollx