Synthetic Fish Oil
According to an article at nature.com, studies done by Charles Serhan and his team of researchers at Harvard suggest that you might want to take aspirin with your fish oil:
Their work in human cells and in mice showed that omega-3 fatty acids in the fish oil are converted into lipids that seem to suppress inflammation. Aspirin speeds up that conversion.
Serhan and his team also think they found the mechanism by which this happens, and created a synthetic form!
The researchers have now pinned down the effect even further by focusing on one of the lipids, called resolvin E1. First they found that healthy human volunteers fed both aspirin and fish oil had resolvin E1 in their bloodstream. Then they created a synthetic form of the lipid and tested its properties.
The results?
The lipid inhibited the migration of particular human immune cells and dramatically reduced inflammation on the skin of rabbits.
The article also states that Serhan is hoping to cheaply make his synthetic lipids in bulk and start testing on humans. Is this “resolvin E1″ behind the inflammatory effects of fish oil? According to Serhan, it’s just the “tip of the iceberg” and they plan to examine all the lipids found in fish oil. Is synthetic fish oil on the horizon? Perhaps in several years — but until then you’d better stick to a highly-purified pharmaceutical grade fish oil.
Poor rabbits!
Not only are synthetic fish oils desirable, but eventually they will become neccessary. Wild fish stocks are already severely depleted due to over-harvesting, and fish farms suffer from pesticides (etc.). Already scientists are working on EFA supplements consisting of concentrated marine microalgae. (After all, EFAs are not produced by fish, but consumed by fish!)
In the meantime, a section on vegetable sources of EFAs would be a welcome addition to this blog!
I would like to receive prices and the concentration’s of EPA and DHA per amount of the fish oil you offer.
Many species of cold water fish, which are used to make fish oil supplements, are in terrible shape because of overfishing, global warming and other manmade threats. Please keep me posted of developments in finding a synthetic alternative. After all, aspirin no longer is made from the bark of a tree. Thank you.