Neuroscience: Omega-3 may protect from
psychosis for years
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NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
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Neuroscience
Embargo
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London: Tuesday 11 August 2015 16:00 (BST)
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New York: Tuesday 11 August 2015 11:00 (EDT)
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Tokyo: Wednesday 12 August 2015 00:00 (JST)
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Sydney: Wednesday 12 August 2015 01:00 (AEST)
A 12 week intervention with omega-3 supplements, for young people at high risk of developing
schizophrenia, reduced both the long-term risk of progression to the psychotic disorder and the
risk of developing other psychiatric disorders, reports a paper in Nature Communications. The
majority of the 41 individuals who received the omega-3 supplements did not show severe
functional impairment either and no longer experienced warning signs for the development of
psychosis at follow-up, almost 7 years after the intervention.
Schizophrenia typically manifests in adolescence or early adulthood and the majority of those
affected gradually develop a variety of clinically significant signs and symptoms. Diagnostic
criteria, termed “ultra-high risk” criteria have been developed to identify young people more likely
to develop psychosis. Previous studies have implicated a lack of omega-3 and omega-6
polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in the development of a number of mental health conditions
and several trials have shown that supplementation with omega-3 PUFAs can reduce psychotic
symptoms.
In 2010 Paul Amminger and colleagues reported that dietary supplementation of omega-3
PUFAs, in participants aged 13 -25, prevented a first episode of a psychotic disorder for up to
one year. Now they report the longer term efficiency of this intervention after a period of 6.7
years with 71 of the original 81 participants. They find that 9.8% of the omega-3 group (4 out 41)
developed psychosis compared to 40% (16 out of 40) in the placebo group. In addition, the
placebo group showed more rapid onset of psychosis and a higher overall incidence of other
psychiatric disorders.
A possible limitation of this study is the sample size, which is not sufficiently large to allow further
analysis of subgroups and further research is necessary to discover a mechanism by which
PUFA supplementation may improve mental health.
Article and author details
1. Longer-term outcome in the prevention of psychotic disorders
by the Vienna omega-3 study
Corresponding Author
Paul Amminger
The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Email: gpamminger@gmail.com, Tel: +61 3 9342 2800
DOI
10.1038/ncomms8934
Online paper*
http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/ncomms8934
* Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends).