Educational information only, not medical advice. Please talk with your physician before changing your diet, taking supplements or ordering lab tests, especially if you are pregnant, take blood thinners or have a medical condition.
All of the following are as declared in the papers themselves:
- Harris WS, who proposed the index [1], is affiliated with OmegaQuant Analytics, a lab that sells Omega-3 Index testing.
- The 2018 Framingham paper lists his OmegaQuant affiliation. Its statistical analysis was "supported by OmegaQuant Analytics, LLC, in part through a grant from the Global Organization for EPA and DHA" (GOED, the omega-3 industry association), alongside NIH funding [11].
- In the 2021 paper, Harris discloses an interest in OmegaQuant, and a co-author discloses funding from the California Walnut Commission. That work was supported in part by an industry-pooled nonprofit (IAFNS) grant, with Framingham funded by the NHLBI [12].
- The seven-country paper declares that Harris holds stock in OmegaQuant and that von Schacky operates Omegametrix. Both are labs that offer the test [3].
- Walker 2019 lists Harris (OmegaQuant) as a co-author [8].
- Disclosure is not the same as error. These conflicts do not make the findings wrong. They are a reason to weigh independent replication, such as the multi-cohort FORCE analysis [13] and the independent RCTs [14][15][16], when deciding how strongly to state conclusions.
Questions? Email omega3@rome.md
References
- Harris WS, von Schacky C. The Omega-3 Index: a new risk factor for death from coronary heart disease? Prev Med. 2004;39(1):212-20. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15208005/
- Schuchardt JP, et al. Red blood cell fatty acid patterns from 7 countries: Focus on the Omega-3 index. Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids. 2022;179:102418. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35366625/
- Walker RE, et al. Predicting the effects of supplemental EPA and DHA on the omega-3 index. Am J Clin Nutr. 2019;110(4):1034-1040. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31396625/
- Harris WS, Tintle NL, Etherton MR, Vasan RS. Erythrocyte long-chain omega-3 fatty acid levels are inversely associated with mortality and with incident cardiovascular disease: The Framingham Heart Study. J Clin Lipidol. 2018;12(3):718-727. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29559306/
- McBurney MI, Tintle NL, Vasan RS, Sala-Vila A, Harris WS. Using an erythrocyte fatty acid fingerprint to predict risk of all-cause mortality: the Framingham Offspring Cohort. Am J Clin Nutr. 2021;114(4):1447-1454. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8488873/
- Harris WS, et al.; FORCE. Blood n-3 fatty acid levels and total and cause-specific mortality from 17 prospective studies. Nat Commun. 2021;12:2329. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33888689/
- Manson JE, et al. Marine n-3 Fatty Acids and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer (VITAL). N Engl J Med. 2019. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30415637/
- Bhatt DL, et al. Cardiovascular Risk Reduction with Icosapent Ethyl for Hypertriglyceridemia (REDUCE-IT). N Engl J Med. 2019. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30415628/
- Nicholls SJ, et al. Effect of High-Dose Omega-3 Fatty Acids vs Corn Oil on Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events (STRENGTH). JAMA. 2020. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33190147/