STUDY SAYS EATING FISH MAY LIMIT HEART ATTACKS.Byline: Jane E. Brody The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times A large long-term study has found that men who eat 7 ounces or more of fish a week are less likely than those who rarely eat fish to die of heart attacks. The new finding, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine The New England Journal of Medicine (New Engl J Med or NEJM) is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is one of the most popular and widely-read peer-reviewed general medical journals in the world. , joins eight other studies that have associated a heart-protective effect with regular fish consumption. The study, conducted among 1,822 employees of the Western Electric Co., in Chicago, found an overall reduction of 42 percent in deaths from heart attack among the fish eaters over a period of 30 years. Most of that reduction was accounted for by a low rate of cardiac deaths that were not sudden, or those occurring more than three hours after the onset of a heart attack. The researchers, headed by Dr. Martha Daviglus, a preventive-medicine specialist at Northwestern University Northwestern University, mainly at Evanston, Ill.; coeducational; chartered 1851, opened 1855 by Methodists. In 1873 it absorbed Evanston College for Ladies. Medical School, in Chicago, took into account dozens of other factors that could influence cardiac risk in the study participants, including the possibility that protection came not from eating the fish but from the replacement of meat in the men's diet. No matter how the data were analyzed, fish eating was associated with a reduced risk of cardiac deaths. ``The good news is that eating small amounts of fish - amounts that can easily fit into all people's diets - make a difference,'' Daviglus said in an interview. Although the study did not record the kinds of fish consumed, she speculated that much of it was ``probably canned tuna'' and lean fish like flounder flounder: see flatfish. flounder Any of about 300 species of flatfishes (order Pleuronectiformes). When born, the flounder is bilaterally symmetrical, with an eye on each side, and it swims near the sea's surface. or cod. ``From this study,'' Daviglus said, ``we can say that eating small amounts of fish, even lean fish, is associated with protection against heart attacks.'' Dr. Charles Hennekens of Brigham and Women's Hospital Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a hospital in the Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill. With Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two founding members of Partners HealthCare. , in Boston, whose Physicians Health Study has also suggested that eating fish reduces cardiac risks, said: ``The public should be reassured that there is likely to be a small to moderate benefit to eating fish twice a week.'' Still, he emphasized that the evidence to date is ``suggestive but not conclusive and more research ought to be done on this.'' Dr. Jeremiah Stamler, emeritus e·mer·i·tus adj. Retired but retaining an honorary title corresponding to that held immediately before retirement: a professor emeritus. n. pl. professor of preventive medicine preventive medicine, branch of medicine dealing with the prevention of disease and the maintenance of good health practices. Until recently preventive medicine was largely the domain of the U.S. at Northwestern and a co-author of the new report, pointed out that ``we don't yet know the mechanism by which fish-eating protects against cardiac deaths.'' |
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