For decades, it’s been shown that taking a fish oil supplement—or incorporating more fish into one’s diet—can improve heart health. But in a new study, a research team in Australia examined its effect among a population that could especially benefit from a boost in their cardiovascular wellness.
Publishing their findings in the esteemed, peer-vetted New England Journal of Medicine in March 2026, nine doctors in Canada, Australia, and California—all holding MDs, PhDs, or both—observed that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for patients receiving hemodialysis. Hemodialysis is a type of dialysis that uses an external machine to filter blood for kidney patients, “yet effective preventive therapies remain limited,” the team stated. Supplementing with polyunsaturated fatty acids have shown cardiovascular benefits for the general population, they said, “but efficacy among patients receiving hemodialysis is uncertain.”
The team assessed 3.5 years’ worth of longitudinal data from 1,228 patients at dialysis locations in Canada and Australia, assigning a capsule containing corn oil among the placebo group, and four grams of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids among the test group.
“The rate of serious cardiovascular events among participants receiving maintenance hemodialysis was lower with daily supplementation with n-3 fatty acids than with placebo,” the research team concluded. Specifically, the fish oil group experienced on average dramatically fewer serious cardiovascular events across the board. Cardiac death was reduced by 45%, heart attacks by 44%, stroke by 63%, and peripheral vascular disease leading to amputation by 43%.
Also noteworthy was that “noncardiac causes of death appeared to be lower in the fish-oil group than in the placebo group.” This is not definitive, but a worthwhile note for observation.
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