Adding Fish Oil

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Anchor lead: Should anyone who’s had a heart attack take purified fish oil? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Purified fish oil, when compared to corn oil, did not show a benefit in people who had cardiovascular risk factors, a recent study shows. Garima Sharma, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, says adding fish oil to drugs such as statins in those already at risk is known as secondary prevention.

Sharma: By the time it comes to secondary prevention its already kind of late, that’s why I think primary prevention primordial prevention, ranging from childhood, reduction of childhood obesity. I think those things are where most of our public health resources and public health dollars should be focusing on.  :17

Sharma notes that reducing risk factors for heart disease is mainly under your control.

Sharma: A sizeable portion of them are lifestyle related. Smoking, and diabetes, and eating poorly, and physical inactivity. In some ways it just tells us the amount of challenges that we have in trying to really change the trajectory of these patients.   :14

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.