Fish oil and spinal cord injury

We're always being told fish oil is good for us. Eat more oily fish. Well apparently there is accumulating evidence, according to S. J. Gladman, that fish oils, and in particular a class of fish oils known as Omega-3, has some remarkable therapeutic potential in a number of disorders of the nervous system, including trauma. Using a cell-based model to replicate the mechanical stretch axons experience around the injury site of a cord lesion, the group from London, who are developing this concept and hope to take it to clinical trial in the near future, have shown significant reduction in cell death after treatment with Omega-3. They went further and found that if, in this model, they used neuronal cells derived from mice that have naturally high levels of Omega-3 AND added Omega-3 cell death was totally abolished. Omega-3 appears to confer neuroprotective effects and will likely only be useful if given in the immediate aftermath of injury.

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Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids have different chemical forms, for example docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) or alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Jodie Hall presented a poster on the effects on dietary eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) in rats with SCI. Surprisingly, when given an EPA-rich diet rats did less well in locomotors tests in contrast to when they received EPA by injection. Why this is is unclear and further work is ongoing to understand why the route of delivery is so important.

Elsewhere M. S. Joseph combined Omega-3 with curcumin (a curry spice) in the diet and found it enhanced learning of new tasks by circuits in the spinal cord after SCI. I suppose we should really be eating fish curry.