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Fish as Medicine for Rheumatoid Arthritis

By NICHOLAS BAKALARJUNE 21, 2017

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Eating fish may help reduce the joint pain and swelling of rheumatoid arthritis, a new study has found.

Researchers studied 176 people in a larger health study who had had physical exams and blood tests and
filled out food frequency questionnaires that indicated their consumption of various types of non-fried
fish.

The study, in Arthritis Care & Research, categorized the participants into groups by fish consumption: less
than one serving a month, one a month, one to two a week, and more than two a week. To rate the
severity of symptoms they used a disease activity score that assigns a number based on the degree of
swelling and pain.

After controlling for race, sex, body mass index, smoking, education, fish oil supplement use, duration of
rheumatoid arthritis symptoms and other health and behavioral characteristics, they found the average
disease activity score in each group declined as fish intake increased.

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COMMENTS

The lead author, Dr. Sara K. Tedeschi, an associate physician at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston,
said that this is an observational study and does not prove cause and effect.
Still, the observed reductions in pain and swelling from the lowest to the highest group in fish intake is
clinically significant. The magnitude of the effect, she said, is large about one-third of the expected
magnitude of the standard drug treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with methotrexate.

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