Fish Oil and Vitamin D Supplements May Not Help Prevent Heart Attacks and Cancer, Study Says

There’s good evidence that fish oil supplements may lower the risk of second heart events — like a heart attack or stroke — in people with heart disease, but few rigorous studies have investigated whether the supplement can help people to lower their risk of having a heart event in the first place. And while some data suggests that people with lower levels of vitamin D tend to have higher rates of heart disease and cancer, the evidence isn’t solid. Now, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association offers more findings about the effects of these two supplements on heart disease and cancer. While they don’t appear to do much overall in this study, fish oil seems to help specific groups of people and the researchers believe that vitamin D may simply take longer to have an effect on cancer rates and deaths. The VITAL study (VITamin D and omegA-3 triaL) set out to provide some more answers on what, if any, effect the two nutrients have on health. It is the first large-scale, rigorous controlled study to investigate how omega-3 supplements may affect heart disease risk in a people without a history of heart problems. More than 25,800 people were randomly assigned to one of four groups: one received 2,000 IU of vitamin D a day and a placebo, another took 1g of omega-3 fatty acids a day with a placebo, a third took both 2,000 IU of vitamin D and 1g of omega-3 a day, an...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Drugs Source Type: news