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American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 84, No. 6, 1554-1555, December 2006
© 2006 American Society for Nutrition

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Reply to IA Brouwer et al

Joseph Lau and Ethan M Balk

Tufts-New England Medical Center Evidence-based Practice Center
Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies
Tufts-New England Medical Center
750 Washington Street
Box 63
Boston, MA 02111
E-mail: jlau1{at}tufts-nemc.org

William S Harris

Nutrition and Metabolic Research Institute
Sanford Research-University of South Dakota
Department of Medicine
Sanford School of Medicine
University of South Dakota
Vermillion, SD

Alice H Lichtenstein

Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory
Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging
Tufts University
Boston, MA

Dear Sir:

We would like to thank Drs Brouwer, Katan, and Zock for pointing out that incorrect data were used in our systematic review (1) to describe the Study on Omega–3 Fatty Acids and Ventricular Arrhythmia (SOFA) (2). The data we used were derived from limited information from the press release that appeared on the European Society of Cardiology website in September 2005 (3). The full report was published in June 2006, several weeks before the publication of our article and after the page proofs of our manuscript had been finalized.

As Brouwer et al noted, from the website presentation we mistook the rates of the composite primary outcome of survival free of ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation as all-cause mortality events, and this resulted in the incorrect calculation of relative risk that appeared in Table 3Go. There were also several other transcription and typographical errors of the Brouwer study in the table. The corrected information from this study is shown in the revised table below. It should be noted that the relative risks of overall and cardiac death are reported in our table instead of the hazard ratio to be consistent with the same outcome metric of the other 2 studies. We calculated the relative risks using the outcome data reported in Table 3Go of the SOFA study article (2). We were previously unable to assess the quality of this study from the limited press release information. With the availability of the published manuscript, we have now evaluated the article in full and assign a quality score to this study.


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  		TABLE 3 Randomized controlled trials of n–3 fatty acid supplements on cardiovascular disease outcomes in patients with implantable cardioverters or defibrillators1

 
The overall conclusion of our analysis remains the same, that very-long-chain n–3 fatty acids have no significant beneficial effect on overall mortality in patients with cardioverter or defibrillator.

We apologize for these mistakes and appreciate the opportunity to correct them.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WSH is a scientific advisor to OmegaMetrix LLC, Monsanto, CardioTabs, and TherRx. JL, EMB, and AHL have no conflict of interest to report.

REFERENCES

  1. Wang C, Harris WS, Chung M, et al. n–3 Fatty acids from fish or fish-oil supplements, but not {alpha}-linolenic acid, benefit cardiovascular disease outcomes in primary- and secondary-prevention studies: a systematic review. Am J Clin Nutr 2006;84:5–17.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
  2. Brouwer IA, Zock PL, Camm AJ, et al. Effect of fish oil on ventricular tachyarrhythmia and death in patients with an implantable cardioverter defibrillators. Results of the Study on Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Ventricular Arrhythmia (SOFA) randomized trial. JAMA 2006;295:2613–9.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
  3. Internet: http://www.escardio.org/vpo/ESC_congress_information/ConferenceReleases/CPreleases05/Brouwer.htm (originally accessed 6 September 2005; most recently accessed 25 July 2006).




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