Data: Fish oil pills don't fix heart ills

MUNICH -- A fish oil pill a day may not keep the doctor away, it seems.

Scientists who reviewed data from about 68,000 patients gathered in 20 trials over 24 years found that people taking fish oil supplements didn't lower their risk for a bevy of ills including heart attacks and strokes.

Diverging recommendations about the benefits of fish-oil supplements, which contain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, can "cause confusion in everyday clinical practice about whether to use these agents for cardiovascular protection," Moses Elisaf and his colleagues from the University of Ioannina in Greece wrote in the study.

The scientists concluded that the use of fish-oil pills is unnecessary to ward off heart disease, contradicting other studies that said the supplements were beneficial.

The paper, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, belongs to a form of research known as a meta-analysis, which evaluates data from previous investigations without doing new clinical work. -- Bloomberg News