School of Public Health, Key Lab of Public Health Safety of the Ministry of Education, NHC Key Lab of Health Technology Assessment, Fudan University, 200030, Shanghai, China.
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Meteorology and Health, Shanghai Typhoon Institute/CMA, 200030, Shanghai, China.
Environ Health. 2022 Oct 29;21(1):104. doi: 10.1186/s12940-022-00908-1.
Dietary fish-oil supplementation might attenuate the associations between fine particulate matter (PM) and subclinical biomarkers. However, the molecular mechanisms remain to be elucidated. This study aimed to explore the molecular mechanisms of fish-oil supplementation against the PM-induced health effects.
We conducted a randomized, double-blinded, and placebo-controlled trial among healthy college students in Shanghai, China, from September 2017 to January 2018. A total of 70 participants from the Fenglin campus of Fudan University were included. We randomly assigned participants to either supplementation of 2.5-gram fish oil (n = 35) or sunflower-seed oil (placebo) (n = 35) per day and conducted four rounds of health measurements in the last two months of the trial. As a post hoc exploratory study, the present untargeted metabolomics analysis used remaining blood samples collected in the previous trial and applied a Metabolome-Wide Association Study framework to compare the effects of PM on the metabolic profile between the sunflower-seed oil and fish oil groups.
A total of 65 participants completed the trial (34 of the fish oil group and 31 of the sunflower-seed oil group). On average, ambient PM concentration on the day of health measurements was 34.9 µg/m in the sunflower-seed oil group and 34.5 µg/m in the fish oil group, respectively. A total of 3833 metabolites were significantly associated with PM in the sunflower-seed oil group and 1757 in the fish oil group. Of these, 1752 metabolites showed significant between-group differences. The identified differential metabolites included arachidonic acid derivatives, omega-3 fatty acids, omega-6 fatty acids, and omega-9 fatty acids that were related to unsaturated fatty acid metabolism, which plays a role in the inflammatory responses.
This trial suggests fish-oil supplementation could mitigate the PM-induced inflammatory responses via modulating fatty acid metabolism, providing biological plausibility for the health benefits of fish-oil supplementation against PM exposure.
This study is registered at ClinicalTrails.gov (NCT03255187).
饮食中补充鱼油可能会减弱细颗粒物 (PM) 与亚临床生物标志物之间的关联。然而，其分子机制仍有待阐明。本研究旨在探索鱼油补充剂对抗 PM 引起的健康影响的分子机制。
我们在中国上海复旦大学枫林校区进行了一项随机、双盲、安慰剂对照试验，纳入了 2017 年 9 月至 2018 年 1 月期间的 70 名健康大学生。共有 35 名参与者随机分配至每天补充 2.5 克鱼油（n = 35）或葵花籽油（安慰剂）（n = 35）组，并在试验的最后两个月进行了四轮健康测量。作为事后探索性研究，本项非靶向代谢组学分析使用了先前试验中剩余的血液样本，并应用代谢组学全关联研究框架比较了 PM 对葵花籽油和鱼油组代谢谱的影响。
共有 65 名参与者完成了试验（鱼油组 34 名，葵花籽油组 31 名）。平均而言，健康测量当天葵花籽油组的环境 PM 浓度为 34.9 µg/m，鱼油组为 34.5 µg/m。在葵花籽油组中，有 3833 种代谢物与 PM 显著相关，在鱼油组中则有 1757 种代谢物与 PM 显著相关。其中，有 1752 种代谢物表现出显著的组间差异。鉴定出的差异代谢物包括花生四烯酸衍生物、ω-3 脂肪酸、ω-6 脂肪酸和 ω-9 脂肪酸，这些物质与不饱和脂肪酸代谢有关，而不饱和脂肪酸代谢在炎症反应中发挥作用。
本试验表明，鱼油补充剂通过调节脂肪酸代谢可以减轻 PM 引起的炎症反应，为鱼油补充剂对抗 PM 暴露的健康益处提供了生物学依据。
本研究在 ClinicalTrials.gov 注册（NCT03255187）。
