Researchers have compared the level of cholesterol in the blood and the level of omega-3 in the red blood cells to assess the risk of developing certain diseases or of dying. Measuring the level of omega-3 in red blood cells provides a more accurate assessment of overall health and risk of death from cardiovascular and other diseases.
What do walnuts, salmon, mackerel and soybean oil have in common? They all contain omega-3s. A necessary nutrient to bring to the human body, because it cannot produce it.
Measuring the level of omega-3s in the body can also give information about a person’s health. Because omega-3 that we ingest can synthesize other molecules including eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA).
American researchers working on the Framingham Heart Study cohort demonstrate in a study the interest of using the level of omega-3 in red blood cells as an index to assess the health of the elderly. It would be more effective than the cholesterol. The results were published in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology.
Risk of death reduced by 33%
To conduct this study, the researchers analyzed the fate of 2,500 participants, none of whom initially had cardiovascular disease. After an average of 7.3 years, people aged 66 on average with a high omega-3 level have 33% less risk of dying.
A high omega-3 level is also synonymous, according to these results, with a reduced risk of cardiovascular events, coronary heart attacks or strokes. The results obtained with the omega-3 index are better than those obtained with tests measuring the different fractions of cholesterol in the blood.
For researchers, further studies are needed to determine whether it is necessary to include omega-3 indexes from now on in addition to already existing glucose and cholesterol tests to assess the health of the elderly.
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