Effects of fish oil supplementation on markers of cardiovascular disease

Introduction: Fish oil (FO) has been suggested as a nutritional approach to controlling lipid levels and cardiovascular disease. End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) patients have an accelerated cardiovascular disease risk profile when compared to apparently healthy populations. Therefore the purpose of this study was study the effects of FO supplementation on lipid markers in ESRD patients. Methods: The study was a double-blind, permuted-randomized, and placebo controlled experimental protocol. Patients were randomly placed into a FO or control group (corn oil). Thirty-four (N=34) patients in the experimental and control groups ingested two softgel pills (1 gram each) of FO supplements containing EPA and DHA or placebo at each meal. Patients followed the supplementation protocol for six months. ANOVA was used to measure pretest and posttest differences in total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL, LDL, VLDL, LDL particle number, LDL size, large HDL, large VLDL, and Lp(a). Results: ANOVA revealed no statistically significant difference between groups at baseline for each variable. ANOVA reported a significant main effect (f=42.97, p=.007) for HDL and LDL (f=14.33, p=.032) with the FO group having lower values at posttest when compared to the placebo. Conclusions: ESRD patients have elevated lipid values and novel approaches to controlling these levels are warranted. Our study suggests that FO supplementation may lead to changes in HDL and LDL suggesting its use may be helpful in reducing cardiovascular disease. More study is needed to understand why other lipid markers were not significantly different.