A Small Cohort Omega-3 PUFA Supplement Study: Implications of Stratifying According to Lipid Membrane Incorporation in Cardiac Surgical Patients.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Copper (Supplement).

The goal of this pilot, small cohort, pre-surgical supplementation study was to evaluate postoperative atrial fibrillation (AF) and cardiac molecular expression profiles employing two data analysis approaches - by treatment randomisation and by stratification using measured n-3 PUFA.

Why It Was Studied

With RCTs interpretation is potentially confounded by background n-3 PUFA intake.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Groups were matched for age, gender, and mean treatment duration (∼20 days).

Resected atrial myocardium was sampled for assay of viability metabolic markers, and blood obtained for erythrocyte membrane lipid measurement.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and pilot study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Copper (Supplement) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Copper (Supplement), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Copper (Supplement) could be set against what happens without it.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Copper (Supplement) study would be practical.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Atrial Fibrillation, Cardiac Surgical Procedures, Dietary Supplements, Erythrocyte Membrane, Fatty Acids, Omega-3 and Membrane Lipids.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Bax, Bcl2, Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and Peroxisomal proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR).

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Copper (Supplement).

Its findings take up roughly 3 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (Heart, lung & circulation), a journal based in Australia.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, all human trials.