Polyunsaturated fatty acids and cardiovascular function in man.

Abstract

Dietary supplementation with either n-6 or n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids has been reported to lower blood pressure in man, and to confer benefits in atherosclerotic vascular disease. Such effects have been suggested to be due to altered in vivo production of vasoactive prostaglandins, but this hypothesis has not been tested previously. Epidemiologic data are often quoted as showing lower blood pressure in populations with a high consumption of fish, but such conclusions are less clear from the primary data. This review presents some of the population studies on the relationship between fish intake, hypertension and vascular disease, discusses problems in studying blood pressure in dietary intervention trials, and reviews the published literature on reducing blood pressure and vascular reactivity with dietary n-3 supplements in volunteers. Recent work addressing a number of controversial points is presented, with the conclusion that pharmacologic doses of n-3, but not n-6, fatty acids can lower blood pressure in humans, but probably do not do so through directly lowering vascular reactivity to catecholamines or increasing the synthesis of vasodilator prostaglandins.