Relation of omega-3 fatty acid and dietary fish intake with brachial artery flow-mediated vasodilation in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Background The relation between dietary fish intake and brachial artery measures including brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD) has not been well established across sex and racial ethnic groups Objective We hypothesized that consumption of nonfried fish and plasma phospholipid measures of long-chain omega 3 (n-3) tatty acids would be positively associated with larger FMD in men and women across racial-ethnic groups Design We investigated cross sectional associations of brachial artery measures with fish intake (ascertained with a food frequency question mire) and plasma phospholipid omega-3 concentrations in 3045 adults aged 45-84 y who were tree of clinical cardiovascular disease Results In overall multivariate adjusted analyses there were no significant associations between fish intake or any brachial artery measures However when stratified by sex there was an association between the highest quartile of nonfried fish consumption and a 0 10 mm lower (1 SD) brachial artery diameter in men (P = 0 01) and a 0 27% smaller FMD in women (P = 0 02) compared with the lowest quartile of nonfried fish intake in each respective sex strata When stratified by race ethnicity and race-ethnicity by sex additional heterogeneity was noted but results were difficult to interpret because of small sample sizes Plasma phospholipid omega-3 concentrations showed a similar directionality of association with brachial artery measures observed for nonfried fish consumption although statistical significance was not achieved in fully adjusted models Conclusion This study indicates that the association between non fried fish intake and baseline brachial artery size vanes by sex with suggestive evidence of sex differences in the association between nonfried fish intake and FMD Am J Clin Nutr 2010 92 1204-13