Habitual Fish Oil Supplementation and Risk of Incident Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: A Prospective Population-Based Study.

Background: Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBDs) have been emerging in recent years with the advance of global industrialization and diet pattern transformation. Marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs), enriched in fish oils, have well-known human health promotion. Evidence on the association of fish oil supplementation with the risk of developing IBDs was scarce. This study aimed to examine the association between the use of fish oil supplements and the risk of developing inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) among the general population. Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of 447,890 participants aged 40-69 years from the UK Biobank. A touch screen questionnaire was used to get the data about fish oil intake at baseline. Incident diagnoses of IBDs were ascertained by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9 and ICD-10) or self-report. Cox proportional hazards model was applied to calculate hazard ratios ( Results: We documented 1,646 incident cases of IBDs, including 533 incident cases of Crohn's disease (CD) and 1,185 incident cases of ulcerative colitis (UC) during an average of 8 years of follow-up. After multivariate adjustment, the use of fish oil was associated with a 12% lower risk of IBDs ( Conclusion: Habitual intake of fish oil supplements was associated with a lower risk of IBDs and UC. Fish oil users tended to have lower baseline C-reactive protein levels and higher baseline albumin levels compared with non-users. It was concluded that fish oil supplement use may be recommended for the prevention and control of IBDs.