Eating fish can help prevent asthma, say scientists after testing over 600 people working in a fish processing factory in a small village in South Africa.
The current theory is that the dramatic change in diet worldwide is behind the rise of the disease, researchers said. “Around 334 million people worldwide have asthma, and about a quarter of a million people die from it every year,” said Andreas Lopata, a scientist from James Cook University in Australia.
“Asthma incidence has nearly doubled in the past 30 years and about half of asthma patients do not get any benefit from the drugs available to treat it. So there’s a growing interest in non-drug treatment options,” he said.
“There is an increasing consumption of what is known as the n-6 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid (PUFA) found in vegetable oils and a decline in consumption of n-3 PUFA, which is mainly found in marine oils,” Lopata said.
“There has been a global move from fresh fish to fast food,” he said.
The scientist said that the fishing village was chosen for the testing because it had a population with high fish consumption and low socioeconomic status, so it would be likely that marine oils from fish and other seafood would be the main source of n-3, rather than supplements.
“We found that certain types of n-3 (from marine oils) were significantly associated with a decreased risk of having asthma or asthma-like symptoms by up to 62 per cent, while high n-6 consumption (from vegetable oils) was associated with an increased risk by up to 67 per cent,” the Australian scientist, Lopata said. (PTI)
