Fish Oil for the Treatment of Crohn's Disease.
There has been a fair amount of interest in fish oil as an antiinflammatory
medicine over the years. In part this is driven by fish oil being
"natural". The scientific reason is that oils in the
diet are the building blocks for certain chemicals the body makes,
some of which are immune modulators. Fish oils contains a group
of oils known as omega-3 fatty acids (chemically a double bond
is present 3 down from the end of the carbon chain of the fat
molecule). These oils are able to prevent the production of certain
inflammatory molecules in the human body.
Fish oil per se is not a defined substance. There is the matter
of variation of the fish, whether the oils is taken from whole
fish sqeezings or just the fillets, and what processing is done.
The whole fish issue is important because toxins (or perhaps useful
drugs) are concentrated in fish livers. Processing is important
because of stability. As with all supplements marketed as foods,
the natural food pushers do not want regulation to be exerted
upon them as it would add all sorts of complexities to their lives.
As I see it, if they are going to push their own products, the
consumer should be assured that the manufacturer can trace the
source of raw material, have a regular way of making the stuff,
keeps records of quality control, and does assays of the important
ingredient(s). Additionally, the studies, if any, used to support
the use of natural products often are used to recommend products
different from those in the study. With something as unregulated,
unassayed, and undefined as health food store products, who knows
whether the health food store drug will do any good.
With this background, now comes a drug which
is a fish oil preparation. Researchers in Italy used a fish oil
preparation called Purepa, manufactured in Sweden, and coated
the capsules with an enteric coating called Eudragit NE 30D. It
is well defined and manufactured with the care a drug company
takes. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM 334(24):1557-1560,
13 June 1996) reported that patients with Crohn's disease had
less relapses when taking the medicine than did those taking placebo.
The study was well done. It used a group of patients randomly
assigned to either drug or placebo. Patients were not able to
tell which drug they were on. (Which also implies that enteric
coated Purepa does not have the nasty fish taste which can make
fish oil hard to take.) The patients who were asked to participate
were known to have a high chance of flares of the disease, based
on their having all been in remission less than 2 years, with
serum alpha 1-acid glycoprotein concentration > 130, alpha
2-globulin > 0.9, or a sed rate > 40. The findings were
remarkable. The patients on drug had a relapse rate of only 41%
compared to controls who had a relapse rate of 74% over the one
year of followup. Diarrhea was a side effect in 4 of 39 fish oil
treated patients vs 1 of 39 placebo patients. The diarrhea did
not resolve when the drug was stopped in experimental or control
subjects. The dosage of fish oil was 9x500 mg capsules per day,
= 4.5 grams of fish oil per day. Interestingly, all relapses occurred
within 7 months in both groups. Also, the fish oil group had improvement
in all three serum measurements made, while the placebo group
all had worsening of the measures.
The problems with the study concern whether the drug will be effective
in all patients with Crohn's, or only those patients like those
in the study. This is a real issue - Crohn's disease is a heterogeneous
group, and the Italian group that published this may have selected
a subset of Crohn's that would respond differently. Also, this
study was done in Italy. The Italian diet differs from a typical
American diet, not to mention Scottish, New Zealand, Chinese,
Dutch, Polish, German, French, or any cuisine that you may wish
to identify. Italians also are heterogeneous in their diet, varying
greatly from North to South, and inland vs seacoast. The study
did not subgroup its results by region of Italy where subjects
were born or lived, which would have been interesting.
It looks like this will be effective, however. Given the safety
of the preparation it will be a welcome addition to treatment
of Crohn's. The variation in fish oil preparations available,
along with the history of previous negative studies with fish
oils, leads me to conclude that until a particular preparation
is studied it will not be possible to say whether any particular
fish oil preparation will work in Crohn's. It is interesting that
both placebo group and Fish Oil group had no more relapses after
7 months. It would be nice to know if the changes in any of the
blood measures predicted who would relapse. The relapse curves
also raise the question whether patients only need to be on the
drug for 7 months to get the full benefit.
Stephen Holland, M.D.
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign
Gastroenterology - Christie Clinic, Champaign IL
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