Fish oil supplements do not help dry eye disease

Multistate E coli outbreak traced

TAMPA, April 14, (Agencies): Fish oil supplements have long been recommended to people suffering from dry eye disease, a common ailment that affects millions worldwide — but a study out Friday says they don’t work.

“Omega-3 supplements are no more effective than placebo at alleviating dry eye symptoms,” read the findings from a randomized clinical trial involving 535 people and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dry eye disease affects more than 16 million Americans, causing burning, itching, stinging, and impaired vision.

Experts estimate that in the United States dry eye costs some $55 billion per year in lost productivity and medical care, according to background information in the article.

Those enrolled in the study had all struggled with moderate to severe dry eye for at least six months.

The subjects were randomly assigned to either a daily dose of an omega-3 supplement or an olive oil placebo, delivered in identical capsules.

Neither the patients nor their eye doctors knew which treatment group they were in.

After a year, symptoms had “improved substantially in both groups,” said the report.

A total of 61 percent of people in the omega-3 group and 54 percent of those in the control group achieved at least a 10-point improved, but the difference between groups was not statistically significant.

“We were surprised that the omega-3 supplements had no beneficial effect,” said study co-author Vatinee Bunya, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania.

“The results are significant and may change the way a lot of ophthalmologists and optometrists treat their patients.”

According to Matthew Gorski, an ophthalmologist at Northwell Health in New York, doctors interested in dry eye and the effectiveness of fish oil supplements have “eagerly awaited results of clinical trials with the hope that it would potentially improve one’s quality of life.”

Gorski, who was not involved in the research, said “further studies should be performed to confirm this finding.”

Jules Winokur, an ophthalmologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, described the study as “important,” and agreed that more work is needed to understand why both groups improved almost equally.

YUMA,

Also: Ariz:

The Centers for Disease Control says a multistate E. coli outbreak that has sickened nearly three dozen people is linked to lettuce grown in Arizona.

The CDC said Friday that 35 people across 11 states have become ill from chopped romaine lettuce from Yuma.

Twenty-two of them have been hospitalized, including three with kidney failure. No deaths have been reported.

The agency has not identified a common grower, supplier, distributor or brand.

But officials advise that consumers, restaurants and retailers should throw out any chopped romaine lettuce that came from the Yuma area.

SAO PAULO:

Brazil’s yellow fever vaccination efforts have fallen significantly short of their goal, the Health Ministry acknowledged this week, and an official said Friday that more than 16 million people in the targeted population still need to be immunized.

In January, the ministry launched a campaign to vaccinate more than 23 million people in three states affected by the largest outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease in decades. As the outbreak expanded, so, too, did the population officials hoped to reach, and they now want to vaccinate 38 million people in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia states.