Docosahexaenoic Acid is More Effective than Eicosapentaenoic Acid in Increasing the Omega‐3 Index Measured in Red Blood Cell Membranes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Whether eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acids have distinct effects on cardiometabolic risk remains unclear as most studies to date have used a mixture of the two fatty acids in various forms and proportions. The Omega‐3 Index (O3I) reflects the sum of EPA and DHA as percent of fatty acids in red blood cell (RBC) membranes and has been inversely associated with the risk of coronary heart diseases and coronary mortality in epidemiological studies. The objective of this study was to assess if supplementation with high dose EPA differentially modify the O3I compared with high dose DHA in men and women at risk of cardiovascular diseases. Methods Using a randomized double‐blind controlled crossover design, 48 men and 106 women with abdominal obesity and subclinical inflammation were randomized to a sequence of three treatment phases: 1–2.7g/d of EPA, 2–2.7 g/d of DHA, 3‐ and 0g/d of EPA+DHA (corn oil). All supplements were provided as 3×1g capsules for a total of 3g/d. Treatment phases had a duration of ten weeks each and were separated by nine‐week washouts. RBC membrane fatty acid composition was measured at baseline and the end of each phase. Differences in RBC membrane fatty acid composition and in the O3I between treatments were assessed using mixed models for repeated measures. Potential confounders of the response to treatments such as weight, sex, age and O3I baseline values were considered. Results The increase in the O3I after DHA (+87% vs. control, p<0.0001) was significantly greater than after EPA (+52% vs. control, p<0.0001; p<0.0001 between DHA and EPA). There was a significant sex*treatment interaction (p=0.046) in the O3I response to EPA and DHA, with similar O3I changes among men and women in response to EPA (0% difference between sexes), but slightly greater O3I increase after DHA among men (+9% compared with women). EPA supplementation increased docosapentaenoic acid (DPA) proportions in RBCs (+84% vs. control, P<0.0001) while DHA decreased DPA in RBCs (−28% vs. control, p<0.0001; p<0.001 between DHA and EPA). Conclusions High‐dose DHA may be more effective than high dose EPA in increasing the O3I, perhaps even more so among men than among women. Because DPA levels are not accounted for in the O3I, in vivo elongation of EPA to DPA may partly explain the difference between EPA and DHA in modulating the O3I. Long‐term intervention studies are needed to determine how this difference relates to cardiovascular risk in men and women. Support or Funding Information This study was supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR, MOP‐123494). Douglas Laboratories provided the EPA, DHA and control capsules used in this study. Janie Allaire is a recipient of a PhD Scholarships from the CIHR and Fonds de recherche du Québec ‐ Santé.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".