Health
Headlines
Get
the latest news in prevention and health matters. This
feature includes daily postings and recent archives to
keep you up to date on health reports and wires around
the world.
Weekly
Wellness
Get
informed with weekly wellness facts in a diversity of
health topics from prevention to fitness and nutrition.
Tips
Great
tips on what you need to know about keeping healthy and
active all year round.
Fish
Oil Prevents Airway
Constriction In Asthma
Adding fish oil supplements to the diet
can prevent the constriction of the airways brought on
by exercise in asthmatics, a very common problem in this
patient group, new research shows.
In an earlier study, Dr. Timothy D. Mickleborough, from
Indiana University in Bloomington, and colleagues had
shown that fish oil supplements can improve lung function
in elite athletes with bronchoconstriction (EIB), but
their use in asthmatics with the condition had not been
well studied.
"The current findings suggest that fish oil supplements
may be of value to asthmatics with EIB," Mickleborough
stated. "Our results support previous reports suggesting
that the benefits are mediated through the antiinflammatory
effects of fish oil."
The researchers assessed pre- and postexercise lung function
and sputum inflammatory markers in 16 asthma patients
with EIB who were randomly assigned to a normal diet supplemented
with fish oil capsules or with placebo for three weeks.
After a two-week interval, in which no supplements or
placebos were given, the patients switched to the other
regimen.
With the normal diet alone as well as the placebo-supplemented
diet, the participants developed EIB. By contrast, with
fish oil supplementation, the decrease in lung function
that occurred with exercise was smaller and did not reach
the threshold needed for an EIB diagnosis. In addition,
with the supplements, the subjects were able to cut back
on bronchodilator usage.
Compared with the other diets, the fish oil-supplemented
diet was associated with a significant drop in a number
of markers of inflammation in the sputum, which was noted
both before and after exercise.
Mickleborough said the study subjects received 20 capsules
of fish oil per day, in keeping with the dose his team
had used in their earlier study, and suspects this may
make patients less compliant. However, he hopes to conduct
a dose-finding study in the future, which could result
in the use of a much smaller dose.
