The Omega-3, it does nothing for me

Some major news in Crohn's disease therapy came out of UWO's Robarts Research Institute. A large scale, multi-centre study on the benefit of Omega-3 fatty acids on inflammation in Crohn's disease found that they had no effect on preventing relapse of disease.

The reason that this is significant is because a study in the mid-90s demonstrated that these fatty acids had a beneficial effect on reducing inflammation. As a result, it has been standard alternative/natural therapy to prescribe fish oils and Omega 3s.

Some quotes below.

The widespread belief among patients and health care providers that omega-3 fatty acids are effective treatment for inflammatory bowel disease may have stemmed from a relatively small Italian research study, published in 1996 in the New England Journal of Medicine, which found a benefit for preventing relapse of Crohn's disease.

Feagan's study includes two large-scale trials involving 738 Crohn's patients (ten times the number of patients involved in the original New England study) at clinical centres in Europe, Israel, Canada, and the United States from January 2003 to February 2007. Both trials demonstrated that the omega-3 fatty acid formulation offered no benefit in preventing relapse in Crohn's disease. However, patients who took the omega-3 fatty acid preparation did have significantly lower concentrations of triglycerides, a high level of which is a risk factor for heart disease.

from Medical News Today