Written by Greg Arnold, DC, CSCS. In an international study done on men in Japan and the US, Japanese men with omega-3 blood levels136% higher than US Caucasian men had a 69% lower rate of calcium build-up in arteries.
Heart disease contributes to 1 in 4 deaths in the United States, or 600,000 people, per year, with 715,000 Americans having a heart attack, 525,000 of which are first heart attacks (2). Coronary heart disease alone costs the United States $108.9 billion each year (3).
Research has shown that calcific artery calcification (“hardening of the arteries”) is “a strong independent predictor of coronary heart disease” (4). Now a new study (5) suggests that having high blood levels of omega-3 fats may be a way to minimize calcific artery calcification.
The study involved 175 Japanese men and 113 Caucasian men from the U.S. aged 40 to 49 participating in the ERA JUMP study (6), a population-based study of men born after World War II. Japanese subjects were recruited from Kusatsu, Shiga, Japan while US subjects were taken from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. They underwent imaging tests used in previous research (7) and provided blood samples between 2002 and 2006 to obtain a “coronary calcium score” and then were re-examined between 2007 and 2010. Each subject was given a score of “0” at the initial exam. If their score was 10 or higher at follow-up, they were considered to have coronary artery calcification.
The average time for follow-up was 6.2 years for the Japanese men and 4.6 years for the U.S. Caucasian men, with 10 of the 175 (5.7%) Japanese men and 15 of the 113 (13.2%) U.S. Caucasian men having calcific artery calcification. When looking at subjects who did not have calcification, the Japanese men had omega-3 blood levels that were 136% higher than the U.S. Caucasian men (9.08 vs. 3.84%, p < 0.01). This resulted in a 69% lower incidence rate of calcific artery calcification of the Japanese men compared to U.S. Caucasian men (0.9 vs. 2.9/100 person years, p<0.01). No significant differences were seen with fasting blood sugar, blood pressure, body mass index, or total cholesterol levels and calcification. Researchers believed that higher dietary intake of long-chained polyunsaturated fatty acids (>1000mg/day) contributed to the lower incidence of coronary artery calcification in Japanese subjects. They stated previously that despite exposure to a westernized lifestyle in Japan, the prevalence of coronary artery calcification in Japanese subjects was significantly lower at baseline than US subjects in a previous study.(8) Furthermore, no genetic link could be cited as a factor since Japanese American men in the US demonstrated a higher prevalence of coronary artery calcification compared to US white men.(7)
When suggesting how omega-3 fats may play a role in calcific artery calcification, the researchers pointed to studies showing high levels of omega-3 fatty acids to affect activity levels of a protein called nuclear factor κ-B which results in an overall decrease in inflammation in blood vessels (9). They then stated that “many of these actions of omega-3 fatty acids most likely require their intake to be ≥1 gram per day” (10).
For the researchers, omega-3 fatty acids “significantly contributed to the difference in the incidence of calcific artery calcification between Japanese and white men.”
Source: Sekikawa, Akira, et al. “Long chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and incidence rate of coronary artery calcification in Japanese men in Japan and white men in the USA: population based prospective cohort study.” Heart (2013): heartjnl-2013.
March 13, 2014.
Greg Arnold is a Chiropractic Physician practicing in Hauppauge, NY. You can contact Dr. Arnold directly by emailing him at PitchingDoc@msn.com or visiting his web site at www.PitchingDoc.com
References:
- “Heart Disease Facts: America’s Heart Disease Burden” posted on the CDC website
- Go AS, Mozaffarian D, Roger VL, Benjamin EJ, Berry JD, Borden WB. American Heart Association Statistics Committee and Stroke Statistics Subcommittee. Heart disease and stroke statistics—2013 update: a report from the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2013 Jan 1;127(1):e6-e245. doi: 10.1161/CIR.0b013e31828124ad. Epub 2012 Dec 12.
- Heidenreich PA, Trogdon JG, Khavjou OA, et al. Forecasting the future of cardiovascular disease in the United States: a policy statement from the American Heart Association.Circulation. 2011;123:933-44. Epub 2011 Jan 24.
- Detrano R, Guerci AD, Carr JJ, et al. Coronary calcium as a predictor of coronary events in four racial or ethnic groups. N Engl J Med 2008;358:1336–45
- Sekikawa K. Long chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and incidence rate of coronary artery calcification in Japanese men in Japan and white men in the USA: population based prospective cohort study . Heart 2014 Apr;100(7):569-73. doi: 10.1136/heartjnl-2013-304421. Epub 2013 Dec 18
- Sekikawa A, Ueshima H, Kadowaki T, et al. Less subclinical atherosclerosis in Japanese men in Japan than in white men in the United States in the post-World War II birth cohort. Am J Epidemiol 2007;165:617–240
- Sekikawa A, Curb JD, Ueshima H, et al. Marine-derived n-3 fatty acids and atherosclerosis in Japanese, Japanese-American, and white men: a cross-sectional study. J Am Coll Cardiol 2008;52:417–24
- Sekikawa A, Horiuchi BY, Edmundowicz D, et al. A “natural experiment” in cardiovascular epidemiology in the early 21st century. Heart 2003;89:255–7.
- De Caterina R. n-3 fatty acids in cardiovascular disease. N Engl J Med 2011;364:2439–50
- Calder PC, Yaqoob P. Marine omega-3 fatty acids and coronary heart disease. Curr Opin Cardiol 2012;27:412–19.
