Can cod liver oil reduce the pain
of arthritis?
SCIENTISTS at Cardiff University hope to prove that taking cod-liver oil can reduce pain and inflammation in older patients with arthritis.
Around 40 patients aged between 65 and 85 waiting for knee replacement surgery at Llandough Hospital in Cardiff will be recruited to take part in a small randomised placebo-controlled trial led by Professor Bruce Caterson of the Connective Tissue Biology Laboratories, Cardiff School of Biosciences.
The work is being funded by a two-year grant of £65,105 by the Arthritis Research Campaign.
Earlier this year the same team hit the headlines when their preliminary studies showed there was a scientific basis for the beneficial effects of cod-liver oil on arthritis; producing a mild anti-inflammatory effect by switching off the COX-2 enzyme which causes pain and inflammation.*
Now they intend to show that the theory works on patients suffering from both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis of the knee. For ten weeks prior to surgery, one group of patients will be given a 1,000mg dose of pure cod liver oil a day; a second group will be given capsules containing oils that reflect the average dietary calorific intake of UK residents.
Regular blood tests will then be taken, and after surgery tissues from the knee replacement operation will be used to analyse the potential benefits of the cod-liver oil supplementation on the metabolic state of the joint tissues.
"We hope to be able to determine whether n-3 fatty acids (ie those found in cod-liver oil) can change the lipid composition in the patient's blood and cells from their joint tissues before surgery, relieve pain, and cause a reduction, at the molecular level, in degradative enzymes and inflammatory mediators in the synovial joint tissues that causes cartilage destruction in arthritis," explained Professor Caterson.
He will be working with Professor John Harwood, an internationally renowned lipid biochemist, and orthopaedic surgeon Colin Dent from the University Hospital of Wales, on Cardiff on the project.
"In the longer term we may obtain preliminary information that suggests that taking n-3 fatty acids before joint replacement may help prevent some of the complications of knee replacement, such as loosening of the artificial joint."
Depending on the results of the study, the Cardiff team hopes in the future to run a larger clinical trial of cod-liver oil on younger patients whose arthritis was brought on by a sports injury or road accidents.
Cardiff is a leading centre of arthritis research, and scientists and clinicians are currently in receipt of grants totalling £1.7m from the ARC.
- The team's findings were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in January 2000.
