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Dietary Supplements

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Question for Department of Health

UIN 214822, tabled on 18 November 2014

Question

Jim Shannon
Democratic Unionist Party
Strangford
Commons

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent research he has commissioned into the health benefits of fish oils.

Answer

George Freeman
Conservative
Mid Norfolk
Commons

Answered on

21 November 2014

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre manages the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation programme. With funding from the Medical Research Council, this programme is currently supporting a £1.5 million trial to find out if an omega-3 fatty acid called EPA found naturally in fish oil, on its own or in combination with aspirin, can prevent the development of bowel polyps.

The NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London has recently co-funded research published in the journal Biological Psychiatry that found that omega-3 fatty acids reduce the rates of depression among patients with high levels of inflammation.

The NIHR/Wellcome Trust Imperial Clinical Research Facility is currently hosting a study on whether fish oil helps people to lose weight.

Answered by

Department of Health and Social Care
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