MONDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) -- Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid intake inversely correlates with blood pressure, according to the results of a large population-based international study published online June 4 in Hypertension.
Hirotsugu Ueshima, M.D., of Shiga University in Shiga, Japan, and colleagues studied omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) intake and its effect on blood pressure in 4,680 participants, aged 40 to 59, from the INTERMAP study, which includes individuals from Japan, China, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Total omega-3 PUFA intake correlated inversely with both diastolic and systolic blood pressure values across all demographics (systolic blood pressure, -0.4 to -0.6 mm Hg; diastolic blood pressure, -0.5 to -0.6 mm Hg). Among those individuals with untreated high blood pressure, differences in blood pressure values of about -1 mm Hg were consistently seen while values dropped about 0.73 for those who were non-hypertensive. Similar results were seen for linolenic acid and long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, though the latter effect was smaller.
"To the best of our knowledge, these INTERMAP data indicating low-order independent inverse relations of food omega-3 PUFAs (total, linolenic, long-chain) to blood pressure are the first comprehensive population-based findings on this matter," the authors write.
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