Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have made a breakthrough discovery that could mean the end of liver disease in children with intestinal failure. Published in the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, the findings from their new study reveal that intravenous injections of fish oil, which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, are capable of completely reversing liver disease, thus eliminating the need for liver transplants and other drastic medical interventions.
Entitled “Six Months of Intravenous Fish Oil Reverses Pediatric Intestinal Failure Associated Liver Disease,” the study involved testing the effects of intravenous fish oil treatment on a group of 10 children between the ages of two weeks and 18 years old. Each of the children in this group had been diagnosed with advanced intestinal failure-associated liver disease, a high-risk health condition that, for many of the people diagnosed with it, ends in early death.
These children were given the novel treatment for a total of six months, and their outcomes were compared to a group of 20 children who also had the disease but were given conventional treatment rather than the fish oil. Compared to this conventional control group, the fish oil group experienced dramatic recovery — after just 17 weeks of treatment, 80 percent of the children in the fish oil group experienced a complete recovery from their liver disease.
“With this particular study, we set out to determine if a finite period of six months of intravenous fish oil could safely reverse liver damage in these children, and we have had some promising results,” says Dr. Kara Calkins, a physician and assistant professor at UCLA’s Mattel Children’s Hospital Department of Neonatology and Developmental Biology, about the findings.
Current FDA-approved treatment protocol involves injecting children with GMO soybean oil
Continue reading →