Thanks

Includes Malcolm Peet as a speaker who has a good reputation and has published in this field (and also viva’d my MPhil!) http://apt.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/8/3/223

FRB – could not find any clue as to who funds this organisation on their site?

Does everyone know about PharmaCom supporting pressure groups? Seeding the market? Holding Conferences in exotic places? Well maybe not the latter but there could be some marketing similarities going on here!

She is listed to speak, specifically on the evidence about omega-3s, at a couple of upcoming conferences
here and here. Is it too much to hope we can send Ben and his notebook to at least one of them? The second one in Cardiff looks particularly promising.

On a completely different subject, I was wondering about “Steve Jones” from Hull too. Hull is, of course, the home of Seven Seas Ltd. who make a bunch of omega-3 products. Do you think we can start our very own “fish oil lobby” conspiracy theory?

I should say I am wholly in favour of eating fish… as opposed to fish oil. Delicious stuff. Good for you too.

So… isn’t there a danger that people might (like I did) confuse the two sets of trials?

What I really don’t like, I suppose, is that research is mostly slow, hard and built up in layers over time. But “the press”, and perhaps the general public, like to have very simple messages to present. “X causes Y, without doubt”, or “worried about being too stupid to bring up your children? give them some of these pills, and you can continue to ignore them”.

Grr (sorry, I *may* have gone off on a rant, there)

ps. I’m hoping to make it to London on the 19th to listen to you, Randi et al.

trials have never been done in mainstream children, only special groups, adhd, dyspraxia, etc.

the durham trial they are referring to there is richardson et al 2005, done in kids with Developmental Coordination Disorder.

i did a quick plain language summary of all the lit a while ago here, it is missing the recent Sinn paper, again not done in mainstream children. as John Stein said in my radio show, the companies are afraid to fund a trial in mainstream children in case it doesnt give them the lucrative result they want:

http://www.badscience.net/?p=299

Academic References

These are the five published trials looking at what happens in children (with various diagnoses) when you give them fish oil supplements. I do not wish to undermine these studies in any sense, but it is worth noting, along with your other readings around them, that in most only a small number of the many variables measured were changed by fish oil, and that the p-values in the variables that were found to be changed were only just below 0.05, that is, they did just reach statistical significance. If you disagree with any of these brief summaries or have anything to add to them then do please let me know. In general, you will see if you get the original papers that they were methodologically meticulous and reported to a high standard. Top Jadad scores all round.

Voigt, R.G. et al., A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of docosahexaenoic acid supplementation in children with attention- deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Pediatrics, 2001. 139(2): p. 189-96.

Kids with ADHD, found no significant differences in objective or subjective ADHD measures between treatment and control group. 63 subjects, 14.3% dropped out.

Richardson, A.J. et al., A randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the effects of supplementation with highly unsaturated fatty acids on ADHD- related symptoms in children with specific learning disabilities. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry, 2002. 26(2): p. 233-239.

Kids with LD, improvements in Conners ADHD score, inattention, and psychosomatic symptoms (P = 0.05, 0.03, 0.05 respectively) (3 out of the 14 things measured). 41 subjects, 22% dropped out.

Stevens, L.Z. et al. EFA supplementation in children with inattention, hyperactivity, and other disruptive behaviors. Lipids, 2003. 38(10): p. 1007-21.

Kids with ADHD or other disruptive behaviours, only a pilot study, improvements in fish oil group for parent rated conduct problems (p=0.05) & attention teacher rated symptoms (P=0.03) (2 out of the 16 things measured). 50 subjects, 34% dropped out.

Hirayama, S. et al., Effect of docosahexaenoic acid-containing food administration on symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder – a placebo-controlled double-blind study. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2004. 58(3): p. 467-73.

Kids with ADHD, no difference between placebo and fish oil group (oh, except the placebo group, rather than the fish oil group, showed a significant improvement in visual short term memory and continuous performance). 40 subjects.

Richardson, A.J. and Montgomery, P., The Oxford-Durham study: a randomized, controlled trial of dietary supplementation with fatty acids in children with developmental coordination disorder. Pediatrics, 2005. 115(5): p. 1360-6.

Kids with Developmental Coordination Disorder, no significant differences between placebo and fish oil groups for motor skills, but improvements for the fish oil group in reading and spelling (P= 0.04 and <0.01) and CTRS-L global scale (P<0.05) and some subscale improvements (P<0.05) for the fish oil group. 117 subjects, 6% dropped out.

Anyway, despite all this, and my natural scepticism towards any of these health supplement stories (like Q10 etc), I’ve been to equazen’s website to have a browse around.

About the constituents of the eye-q pills, they say:

“Testimonials from parents and children have indicated real benefits in learning ability and concentration. eye q has become one of the leading supplements in the UK and European markets for anyone with concerns about fatty acid deficiency in learning and behaviour. The formulation has been scientifically tested, most notably in the ground-breaking Oxford-Durham schools trial, which investigated how fatty acids may be of benefit in the classroom.”

Now… I didn’t like this paragraph because they take “anecdotal evidence says…” and “we’ve done some tests” and juxtapose them to make it sound like the tests back up the anecdotes. Anyway, they provided a link to a page about eye-q research:
http://www.equazen.com/default.aspx?pid=145

This page states:
“The Oxford-Durham Schools Trial

Full details are explained on http://www.durhamtrial.org, but in short this is the most comprehensive and thorough trial yet of how fatty acids may be applied in the classroom. This trial was run by the Durham LEA, and we contributed free active and placebo capsules. The first results published in the American journal Pediatrics indicate significant benefits for concentration and behaviour.”
So: explicit mention of placebos, mention of some published research. Is this the same trial that is now being referred to as not having been a trial, etc? I am now rather confused.

If you improve a school between 2005 and 2006 then you get better results in 2006, but why would that give you even better results than that in 2007? I suppose that one argument is that the 2007 cohort have spent 2 years in the improved regime in lower classes and the 2006 cohort only had one year after the improvements and one year before, but please show your working.

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/display.var.2167279.0.0.php

Who is this Steve Jones character, surely not the ageing Sex Pistols “guitarist”?

Asides from the missing control group, if any valuable data were to come from this, one would have to ensure that the children and the teachers did not know the results of the mocks, otherwise you cannot compare the mocks and finals to judge improvement. Knowing you’re likely to fail in a subject is going to have such a huge effect (positively or negatively) on your efforts in that subject that the effects of a few miligrams of oil will become impossible to judge.

Try 40 fags a day. That should give you a nice deep voice. (May have side effects)

Regarding the results – the TV clip says “Durham schools recorded their best ever GCSE results” clearly implying it’s the fish oil wot dun it. From the figures you quote above regarding rate of improvement vs noise, it sounds as if they might be busy massaging what data they have to try to get the required answer. If they’re bothering at all – they might just be hoping that it all quietly goes away.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7320000/newsid_7329600/7329659.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&bbcws=1

Or stick to radio.

http://www.badscience.net/?p=538

“The preceding year, with no fish oil, the results – the number of kids getting 5 GCSE grades A* to C – had improved by 5.5%. And now? After the fish oil intervention? This rate of improvement seems to have deteriorated spectacularly. I chased the results myself through Durham press office: this year there was only a 3.5% improvement. And this is against a backdrop of a 2% increase in GCSE scores nationally.”

So, regression to the mean? Extra support from outside? Noise? Fish oil retarded the improvements? Who knows. Well, Durham might have some more data, but frankly…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7320000/newsid_7328800/7328844.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&bbcws=1

Very strange.

http://www.theadvertiserseries.co.uk/search/display.var.2164706.0.0.php