Topic
Docosahexaenoic acid
About: Docosahexaenoic acid is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14412 publications have been published within this topic receiving 620852 citations. The topic is also known as: all-cis-DHA & all-cis-docosa-4,7,10,13,16,19-hexaenoic acid.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
More filters
••
TL;DR: The findings of this study suggest that unsaturated fatty acid metabolism is significantly dysregulated in the brains of patients with varying degrees of Alzheimer pathology.
Abstract: Background
The metabolic basis of Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology and expression of AD symptoms is poorly understood. Omega-3 and -6 fatty acids have previously been linked to both protective and pathogenic effects in AD. However, to date little is known about how the abundance of these species is affected by differing levels of disease pathology in the brain.
Methods and findings
We performed metabolic profiling on brain tissue samples from 43 individuals ranging in age from 57 to 95 y old who were stratified into three groups: AD (N = 14), controls (N = 14) and “asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease” (ASYMAD), i.e., individuals with significant AD neuropathology at death but without evidence for cognitive impairment during life (N = 15) from the autopsy sample of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA). We measured 4,897 metabolite features in regions both vulnerable in the middle frontal and inferior temporal gyri (MFG and ITG) and resistant (cerebellum) to classical AD pathology. The levels of six unsaturated fatty acids (UFAs) in whole brain were compared in controls versus AD, and the differences were as follows: linoleic acid (p = 8.8 x 10−8, FC = 0.52, q = 1.03 x 10−6), linolenic acid (p = 2.5 x 10−4, FC = 0.84, q = 4.03 x 10−4), docosahexaenoic acid (p = 1.7 x 10−7, FC = 1.45, q = 1.24 x 10−6), eicosapentaenoic acid (p = 4.4 x 10−4, FC = 0.16, q = 6.48 x 10−4), oleic acid (p = 3.3 x 10−7, FC = 0.34, q = 1.46 x 10−6), and arachidonic acid (p = 2.98 x 10−5, FC = 0.75, q = 7.95 x 10−5). These fatty acids were strongly associated with AD when comparing the groups in the MFG and ITG, respectively: linoleic acid (p ASYMAD>AD) and increases in docosahexanoic acid (AD>ASYMAD>control) may represent regionally specific threshold levels of these metabolites beyond which the accumulation of AD pathology triggers the expression of clinical symptoms. The main limitation of this study is the relatively small sample size. There are few cohorts with extensive longitudinal cognitive assessments during life and detailed neuropathological assessments at death, such as the BLSA
Conclusions
The findings of this study suggest that unsaturated fatty acid metabolism is significantly dysregulated in the brains of patients with varying degrees of Alzheimer pathology.
216 citations
••
TL;DR: The conclusions drawn from this review suggest that omega-3 FAs in particular eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) found principally in oily fish have potent anti-angiogenic effects inhibiting production of many important angiogenic mediators.
216 citations
••
TL;DR: Highly purified DHA may be a more effective anti-thrombotic agent than EPA, however, longer-term studies assessing morbidity and mortality are needed in order to establish if DHA contributes to reducing CHD amongst Type 2 diabetic patients with treated hypertension.
216 citations
••
TL;DR: The reduction in plasma triacylglycerol after an increased intake of n-3 long-chain PUFAs results in favorable changes in LDL size, and decreasing the n-6:n-3 does not influence insulin sensitivity or lipase activities in older subjects.
216 citations
••
TL;DR: Infants fed control formula had significantly poorer visual evoked potential visual acuity at 12 mo of age than did infants who received any of the DHA-supplemented formulas (P < 0.001); higher amounts of DHA supplementation were not associated with additional improvement ofVisual acuity.
216 citations