Fish Protects the Heart

Eating fish in amounts comparable to those of people living in Japan seems to impart a protective factor that wards off heart disease.  Akira Sekikawa, from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (Pennsylvania, USA), and colleagues followed 266 men, ages 40-49 years at the study’s start, for five years, tracking multiple factors that affect cardiovascular health, including cigarette smoking, the level of cholesterol in the blood and alcohol consumption, as well as their rates of diabetes and high blood pressure. Middle-aged Japanese men living in Japan had lower incidence of coronary artery calcification, a predictor of heart disease, than middle-aged white men living in the United States.  After accounting for risk factors for heart disease, the U.S. men had three times the incidence of coronary artery calcification as the Japanese men. As well, the levels of marine-derived omega-3 fatty acid in the blood were more than 100% higher in the Japanese than in the white men. The study authors report that: “[Long chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids] significantly contributed to the difference in the incidence of [coronary artery calcification] between Japanese and white men.”