Fish Oil Pills No Help in Pregnancy

Oct. 20, 2010— -- Taking fish oil supplements during pregnancy won't boost baby's brain or prevent postpartum depression for mom, researchers found.

Overall cognitive scores were nearly identical and language scores tended to be lower in children exposed to docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)-rich fish oil during gestation than scores in controls, according to researcher Maria Makrides of the Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, Australia.

As for the new mothers, there was no significant difference in the prevalence of depressive symptoms in the first six months postpartum between women who took the fish oil pills and those who didn't, the investigators reported in the Oct. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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Many pregnant women have turned to such supplements to meet recommendations for daily intake of 200 mg/d DHA, a critical nutrient for neurodevelopment for which fish is the main dietary source.

Although epidemiologic evidence points to lower postpartum depression risk and better neurodevelopment with dietary consumption of fish in pregnancy, the evidence for fish oil supplements has been less than unanimous and limited by methodological issues, Makrides and colleagues noted.

The discrepancy might reflect residual confounding in the observational studies, or it may just be that eating fish is better than taking a supplement, commented Dr. Emily Oken of Harvard and Dr. Mandy B. Belfort of Children's Hospital Boston in an accompanying editorial.

"It may be that the n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in fish are more bioactive or that other beneficial nutrients within fish, such as selenium, vitamin D, and iodine, are also important," they wrote in JAMA.

Longer-term follow-up of children in the study is needed to see if advantages from extra DHA exposure show up in the school years, the editorialists noted.

Makrides' group argued that their results don't support routine DHA supplementation for pregnant women.

But Oken and Belfort recommended that, for now, women should continue to aim for the recommended daily intake of DHA through low-mercury, high-DHA fish intake or supplements.