Nice find............... here's where it's THE EPA STUPID needs to be communicated loudly again. I am astounded by the fact that they cite the Jellis study which did not use a placebo yet with a smaller EPA dose had significant CVD benefits...... then they cite the REDUCE-IT study which had a larger dose of EPA yet the reasons for the differences in the EPA group and EPA+DHA group are unclear. Where do these people go to school? On Sesame Street? With all due respect to Sesame Street of course.
"Results from the Japan EPA Lipid Intervention Study in 2007 supported the growing body of evidence that LC omega-3s reduce the risk of heart disease, especially in people with a history of coronary artery disease [56]. In this study, 18,645 people with hypercholesterolemia (total cholesterol of at least 251 mg/dL) with or without coronary artery disease received either 1.8 g/day EPA plus a statin or a statin only. After a mean of 4.6 years, the EPA group had 19% fewer major coronary events than the control group. The EPA group also experienced a significant reduction in rates of unstable angina and nonfatal coronary events but not in rates of sudden cardiac death or coronary death in comparison with the control group.
In an analysis of the primary prevention subgroup from this study (participants with no history of coronary artery disease), EPA supplementation had no significant effects on any outcome. However, for the secondary prevention subgroup (those with a history of coronary artery disease), the EPA group had a 28% reduction in the rate of unstable angina and a 19% reduction in that of major coronary events. A separate analysis of data from this study found that the EPA supplementation did not affect total stroke incidence but did reduce the risk of recurrent stroke by 20% in patients who had previously experienced a stroke [57]."
"However, both the REDUCE-IT and STRENGTH studies used similar doses of omega-3s (4 g/day) but reported significant CVD benefit in the former and none in the latter. The reasons for the different results are not clear, but a partial explanation—beyond differences in the omega-3 formulation (ethyl ester EPA vs. carboxylic acid EPA and DHA) and the baseline health of the study population—may lie with the different placebo comparators used, mineral oil in REDUCE-IT and corn oil in STRENGTH [64,73,74]. Mineral oil is not a neutral placebo; it affects lipid levels and inflammatory markers and may inhibit the absorption of statin drugs. Therefore, in REDUCE-IT, differences in CVD events between the treatment and placebo groups would likely be smaller if a more neutral placebo oil had been used."
