Diet high in Omega-3 supplements have no effect on cognitive decline

Because all of the participants were at risk of worsening of their AMD, they were also offered the original or a modified version of the AREDS formulation (without omega-3 or lutein/zeaxanthin). All of the participants were tested on cognitive skills at the start of the study and came back every two years for additional assessments.

A new study doubts fish oil supplements can slow the decline of brain function, a key rebuttal to a common health claim of the popular supplements. They were 72 years old on average and 58% were female. The data has been building, slowly but surely, and now the strongest study yet may finally dispel the myth that taking omega-3 supplements can protect the brain from cognitive decline and dementia. The study will have to be applied to a wider population in order to confirm that omega-3 supplements found in pills do not slow mental decline for the elderly. The tests, all validated and used in previous cognitive-function studies, included eight parts created to test immediate and delayed recall, attention and memory, and processing speed. No combination of supplements made a difference in the results – all groups showed a similar decrease in cognition scores over time.

Alzheimer’s disease, which affects 5.1 million senior citizens, may triple in the next 40 years, and the study said that more research is needed to determine if a preemptive cocktail of nutritional supplements will be a successful deterrent. Some studies in mice have pointed to potential benefits of the supplement, including the reduction of abnormal protein deposits in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s.

Co-author Dr Lenore Launer, from the US National Institute on Ageing, said: “The. data add to our efforts to understand the relationship between dietary components and Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline”. “It looks like high dose omega-3 supplementation is not the same as eating high amounts of omega-3s in a healthy dietary pattern high in marine fish and other beneficial foods and nutrients”, says Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study.

For more information about AMD and AREDS2, visit https://nei.nih.gov/areds2/.

The AREDS trial is registered at www.ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT00594672.

Age-Related Eye Disease Study 2 (AREDS2) Research Group. Not necessarily. First, there’s the question of whether omega-3 fatty acids from the diet, from foods such as fatty fish, can have more potent effects on health than supplements. JAMA, published online August 25, 2015. NEI supports basic and clinical science programs that result in the development of sight-saving treatments.

In the words of the deputy clinical director at the National Eye Institute, Elizabeth Chew, omega 3 fish oil pills “just don’t cut it”. More research will need to be conducted to confirm these findings.