Blood n-3 fatty acid levels and total and cause-specific mortality from 17 prospective studies

Publication: Nature Communications

William S. Harris, Nathan L. Tintle, Fumiaki Imamura, Frank Qian, Andres V. Ardisson Korat, Matti Marklund, Luc Djoussé, Julie K. Bassett, Pierre-Hugues Carmichael, Yun-Yu Chen, Yoichiro Hirakawa, Leanne K. Küpers, Federica Laguzzi, Maria Lankinen, Rachel A. Murphy, Cécilia Samieri, Mackenzie K. Senn, Peilin Shi, Jyrki K. Virtanen, Ingeborg A. Brouwer, Kuo-Liong Chien, Gudny Eiriksdottir, Nita G. Forouhi, Johanna M. Geleijnse, Graham G. Giles, Vilmundur Gudnason, Catherine Helmer, Allison Hodge, Rebecca Jackson, Kay-Tee Khaw, Markku Laakso, Heidi Lai, Danielle Laurin, Karin Leander, Joan Lindsay, Renata Micha, Jaako Mursu, Toshiharu Ninomiya, Wendy Post, Bruce M. Psaty, Ulf Risérus, Jennifer G. Robinson, Aladdin H. Shadyab, Linda Snetselaar, Aleix Sala-Vila, Yangbo Sun, Lyn M. Steffen, Michael Y. Tsai, Nicholas J. Wareham, Alexis C. Wood, Jason H. Y. Wu, Frank Hu, Qi Sun, David S. Siscovick, Rozenn N. Lemaitre, Dariush Mozaffarian

24 April 2021


Summary

The EPIC-Norfolk Study from the MRC Epidemiology Unit and sixteen other study groups from Europe, the United States, and Asia came together to do research in the framework of the FORCE – Fatty Acids & Outcomes Research – Consortium. In this global collaboration, researchers examined the relationship between markers of fish consumption in the blood and the risk of death from any cause, analysing data from a total of 42,466 study volunteers.

Researchers measured blood levels of ‘omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids’, which are molecules circulating in our blood. Fish is typically rich in those markers or ‘omega-3s’. Our body cannot synthesise them, and thus the blood levels of those markers reflect habitual or usual fish consumption.   Our analysis showed  that those showing higher blood levels of omega-3s lived longer than those with lower levels. In other words, those people with relatively low omega-3 levels died prematurely, i.e., all else being equal, they might have lived longer had their blood omega-3 levels been higher.

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