Fish Oil More Effective than Drug

This post was originally published as Fish Oil More Effective than Drugs by Laurel on Health Food blog.

New research from Europe found that fish oil supplements are more effective than a popular cholesterol medication at helping people with chronic heart failure. When someone has chronic heart failure, their heart becomes enlarged and fails to fill with blood to pump it through the body. In the study, almost 3,500 patients were given an prescription formula omega-3 pill on a daily basis. About the same number of patients took a placebo. The patients were followed for about four years. A parallel study gave one group the cholesterol drug Crestor and placebo pills to the other group.

When comparing the results from both studies, researchers found that taking fish oil (omega-3) supplements are slightly more effective than the drug. Dr. Richard Bonow, Chief of Cardiology at Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago and former president of the American Heart Association, says that “it’s a small benefit, but we should always be emphasizing to patients what they can do in terms of diet that might help.”

Dr. Jose Gonzalez Juanatey from the European Society of Cardiology says these new findings may give patients a new treatment and offer a change of dietary recommendations for people with chronic heart failure. Juanatey said, “this reinforces the idea that treating patients with heart failure takes more than just drugs.”