Purified Fish Oil

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Anchor lead: Even prescription fish oil may not reduce the risk for heart problems, Elizabeth Tracey reports

When compared to mineral oil, highly purified prescription fish oil seemed to reduce cardiovascular events among those at risk, but the most recent study comparing it to corn oil failed to show a benefit. Garima Sharma, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins with a special interest in this area, says right now the solution may be more studies.

Sharma: It’s a challenging population. These people have diabetes, they have had heart attacks, they have had MIs, and they still have multiple components of their lipid panel that in spite of statins are not under control. You would like them to get that and the other kid on the block is the PCSK9 drugs, which are also very expensive. And so when we’re looking at choosing the right therapies for the patient we’ve got to do our due diligence in trying to make sure that our patients are being benefited by the therapies.  :29

Sharma notes that a study comparing these therapies to further reduce cholesterol would likely have to be federally funded. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.