Omega-3 better than cholesterol-lowering medicines cardiology congress is told

9-2-2005 - The European Cardiology Congress, starting this weekend in Sweden’s capital Stockholm, will hear fresh evidence of the benefits of Omega-3 fish oil in relation to heart disease.

New research is to be presented at the congress showing that Omega-3 fatty acids lower the risk of death from heart and artery diseases just as well as the cholesterol-lowering medicines like Statins.

The study will be presented during the congress and shows that a person with heart problems can lower the risks by eating fatty fish or Omega-3 fatty acids from marine oils. The study indicates that Omega-3 fatty acids can even work better than Statins.

The Swiss Basel Institute for Clinical Epidemiology has studied 97 separate research papers that have investigated how different fat lowering substances affect the mortality in heart and artery diseases. The results indicate that Omega-3 fatty acids on average lower mortality by 32 percent and statins by 22 percent.

The study was recently published in Archives of Internal Medicine. Omega-3 fatty acids main advantage is that they lower that kind of blood fat called triglyceride but seem to also increase the amount of the good cholesterol. Statins, on the other hand lower the amount of the bad cholesterol, the one that leads to clogged arteries.

A lot of research also indicates that both Omega-3 and statins retard inflammations in the body.

The latest research indicates that clogged arteries are caused by an inflammation. Therefore, the anti-inflammatory effect can be part of the explanation to the lowered mortality.

The congress is Europe’s largest doctors' congress, where the latest research in heart and artery area is presented to the approximately 25,000 delegates.

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