Effect of dietary supplementation with eicosapentaenoic acid in the treatment of atopic dermatitis

Abstract

The effects of a dietary supplement of n-3 fatty acids in patients with atopic dermatitis were investigated in a 12-week, double-blind study. The experimental group received 10 g of fish oil daily, of which about 1.8 g was eicosapentaenoic acid. This amount of eicosapentaenoic acid can be obtained from a daily intake of fat fish. The controls received an iso-energetic placebo supplement containing olive oil. Compliance was monitored by gas-chromatographic analysis of the fatty acid pattern in serum phospholipids. Results favoured the experimental group with regard to scale (P less than 0.05), itch (P less than 0.05) and overall subjective severity (P less than 0.02) as compared to the controls.

Fatty acid composition in maternal milk and plasma during supplementation with cod liver oil

“…This suggests that vitamin E de®ciency is not induced by cod liver oil consumption. The level of plasma tocopherol in our population of lactating mothers was in the same range as in Norwegian dermatological outpatients (Bjorneboe et al, 1987).…”

Dietary habits among patients with atopic dermatitis

“…In eczematous skin disorders, activated T-cells are a major in®ltrating cell type (Zachary et al, 1985). In a previous double-blind study, three months of supplementation with very long-chain n-3 fatty acids to patients with atopic dermatitis was superior to the supplementation with olive oil (Bjùrneboe et al, 1987). In the much larger double-blind, multi-centre study, in which our presently studied atopic patients participated, dietary supplementation with very long-chain n-3 fatty acids or corn oil, both types of oil supplementation caused a signi®cant clinical improvement, compared with baseline scores, but there was no signi®cant difference between the two groups (Sùyland et al, 1994).…”

“…However, for adult patients, food hypersensitivity seems to be less important during development of the disease, and food restriction might be exaggerated. Very little documented information is available about the dietary habits among adult patients with atopic dermatitis, except from some intervention studies (Soter & Fitzpatrick, 1987;Bjùrneboe et al, 1987;Sùyland et al, 1994). Therefore, we evaluated the intake of foods and nutrients in a group of adult patients with moderate or severe atopic dermatitis.…”

Fish Consumption, Allergic Sensitisation and Allergic Diseases in Adults

“…Nevertheless, there are different and partly inconsistent results concerning the n-3 hypothesis. Some studies could find significant associations between PUFAs in the diet, allergic sensitisation and allergic symptoms [4,8,9,11,21] , but other studies found no such effect [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] . Although the n-3 hypothesis is biologically plausible, it has not been confirmed by many epidemiological studies [29] .…”