Omega-3 Fatty Acids Supplementation in Children to Prevent Asthma: Is it Worthy?—A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Asthma is one of the most common respiratory diseases affecting all age groups. The world is now trying to identify some dietary factors which can play a preventive role. We performed this systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs to assess the effect of intake of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) in infancy and/or childhood on incidence of asthma orwheezing episodes.We searched MEDLINE, EBSCO, Trip, and Google Scholar up to January 31, 2015. All RCTs where infants or children who were given omega- 3 fatty acid supplementation and which reported incidence of asthma and/or wheezing episodes as dichotomous outcomes were included in this review. Randomeffectsmodelwas used for pooling the risk estimates. Total five articleswere included.Most of them were from Australia. On meta-analysis, the pooled estimate of odds ratios by random effects model showed no significant change in incidence of asthma after supplementation of omega-3 FA in infancy or childhood (OR 0.974; CI 0.646, 1.469; 𝑝 = 0.900). We concluded that a multicentric RCT is required to assess the effect of omega-3 FA supplementation exclusively to infants or children to predict the best time of omega-3 FA supplementation to prevent asthmatic or wheezing episodes later in life.