“The OMEGA-REMODEL study provides randomized trial evidence that 4 g daily dose of O-3FA is a safe and effective treatment in improving cardiac remodeling in patients receiving current guideline-based post-myocardial infarction therapies”, the authors concluded.
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“On average”, says Dr. Kwong, ” If they were given fish oil, there was a six-percent improvement in the heart function and also six-percent improvement in suppressing scarring formation in the heart muscle”.
The study’s suggestion that high doses of omega-3 can help improve recovery after a heart attack is a provocative finding, Kwong said, although the research was not created to prove that high doses of the supplement could actually lower the risk of death after heart attack.
For the study, published in the journal Circulation, they studied almost 360 people who recently had a heart attack, who were randomly assigned to take 4g of omega-3 fatty acids or a placebo pill for six months.
“Heart failure is still a major problem after a heart attack despite all the therapy we have and the advances in interventional care”, said Raymond Y. Kwong, M.D., M.P.H., senior author of the study and director of Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
Now a new study finds that omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil may help heart attack patients recover by improving heart function and reducing scarring in the heart muscle.
Dr. Kwong cautions that heart attack survivors shouldn’t just start taking fish oil.
“I’m terrific like I never had a heart attack”, he said. The heart pump function is weaker and scar tissue develops, and over time these two processes can lead to heart failure, he said.
For the new study, 360 heart attack survivors were randomly assigned to take either omega-3 supplements or a placebo, starting within a month of hospitalization and continued for six months. Adverse events were not associated with high-dose omega-3 fatty acid therapy.
A doctor might typically prescribe 1 to 2 grams of omega-3 fatty acid supplements a day if a patient has high triglyceride levels (a type of blood fat), Kwong added.
Dr. Kwong says patients in the study didn’t suffer any serious side effects. The American Heart Association recommends two servings of fatty fish like salmon or albacore tuna per week.
These are questions Kwong and others hope to answer with more studies. Researchers used MRI’s to look at the hearts before and after. “This opens opportunities for more studies”.
Though heart attack survival has greatly increased with improved treatments, heart failure later is still common, he said.
People should consult their physician before taking any type of supplement. The also had less blood left in the left ventricle of the heart after the heart muscle fully contracted, which means the heart was pumping more effectively.
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According to the American Heart Association, the amount of heart muscle damage that occurs following a heart attack is dependent on the size of the area that is deprived of oxygen and how long for.
