What is it about?
This article reviews the evidence that fish oil can help manage two common inflammatory eye diseases – dry eye disease and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It also describes mechanisms, including conversion of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids into some recently discovered anti-inflammatory mediators, that may explain the beneficial effects of fish oil on these diseases. It attempts to explain discrepancies in the clinical data and makes a recommendation as to the effective dose.
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Why is it important?
Inflammatory eye diseases are a significant and growing health issue for which safe and effective dietary interventions are desirable.
Perspectives
Study of the benefits of long chain omega-3 is complicated by multiple factors. Epidemiologic study based on diet records provides at best a crude assessment of n-3 status, with large errors possible in the estimates of both n-3 and n-6 intake. Intervention studies face the usual challenges of compliance, both in terms of consumption of the test materials, and variable contributions of the background diet (including n-3 supplement use by the negative control group). And interventions studies for many endpoints are further complicated by medical interventions that have become the standard of care. The emergence of validated measures of n-3 status (e.g., the Omega-3 Index) provides a means to help resolve conflicting results, and points to effective dosages of long chain n-3 that are not difficult to achieve.
Bruce Daggy
Shaklee Corp
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Role of Fish Oil in Inflammatory Eye Diseases, Biomedicine Hub, February 2017, Karger Publishers,
DOI: 10.1159/000455818.
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