Adding high-dose fish oil to conventional disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) for early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients leads to a greater remission rate and reduces the chance of treatment failure at one year, according to a randomized clinical trial from Australia.
The current trial demonstrates the benefits for fish oil in real-world clinical practice. It randomized 140 early RA patients to high-dose EPA/DHA (5.5 g/day). Patients taking only0.4 g/day of the supplement acted as controls. Women in their mid-50s on a common “triple therapy” of conventional DMARDs made up the majority of the cohort.