Intake of Fish and Marine n-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies

Previous epidemiological studies have investigated the association of fish and marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) consumption with cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality risk. However, the results were inconsistent. The purpose of this meta-analysis is to quantitatively evaluate the association between marine n-3 PUFA, fish and CVD mortality risk with prospective cohort studies. A systematic search was performed on PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and MEDLINE databases from the establishment of the database to May 2021. A total of 25 cohort studies were included with 2,027,512 participants and 103,734 CVD deaths. The results indicated that the fish consumption was inversely associated with the CVD mortality risk [relevant risk (RR) = 0.91; 95% confidence intervals (CI) 0.85-0.98]. The higher marine n-3 PUFA intake was associated with the reduced risk of CVD mortality (RR = 0.87; 95% CI: 0.85-0.89). Dose-response analysis suggested that the risk of CVD mortality was decreased by 4% with an increase of 20 g of fish intake (RR = 0.96; 95% CI: 0.94-0.99) or 80 milligrams of marine n-3 PUFA intake (RR = 0.96; 95% CI: 0.94-0.98) per day. The current work provides evidence that the intake of fish and marine n-3 PUFA are inversely associated with the risk of CVD mortality.

Automated summary

This meta-analysis found an inverse association between fish consumption and CVD mortality risk, as well as a reduced risk of CVD mortality with higher intake of marine n-3 PUFA. Increasing daily intake of fish and marine n-3 PUFA was associated with a decrease in the risk of CVD mortality.