electrocardiogramA study that appeared in the European Heart Journal ((2012) 33 (13): 1582-1588. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehr499) looked at 3,740 patients using cholesterol-lowering medication (statin) and at 413 patients who did not take statin drugs. The subjects of the study were randomly chosen to receive either 400 mg/day of EPA plus DHA from fish oil, 2 grams of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), a combination of the three fatty acids, or a placebo. During the course of the study, 13% of the statin users and 15% of the non-statin users experienced a major cardiovascular event. Among the non-statin users, 18% of those taking a placebo had a major cardiovascular event, compared to 9% of those who were taking the fish oil. There was no difference between the number of cardiovascular events in the placebo group and the fish oil group  for subjects who were taking statin medication. The authors concluded “This study suggests that statin tretment modifies the effects of omega-3 fatty acids on the incidence of major cardiovascular events.” Another thing worth noting is that the percentage of people having major cardiovascular events was lower for patients taking fish oil than it was for patients taking statins.