Kristie McNealy, MD

Over the past few years, the omega-3 fatty acid DHA has become an increasingly popular component of infant formula. DHA, along with the omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid are the key building blocks of healthy brain and eye development. Despite this knowledge, omega-3s ae completely absent in the IV nutrition used to provide nourishment to preemies around much of the world.

This absence of omega-3s could be a key component in the development of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) in premature infants. In full term pregnancies, most omega-3s are passed from mom to baby during the third trimester. Premature babies are born while their retinas are still forming and the blood vessels which nourish them are still developing. Sometimes, something causes these blood vessels to develop abnormally, resulting in ROP.

To study the impact of omega-3s on the development of ROP, researchers took mice with damaged retinas, and fed them either a diet high in omega-6, or one more similar to a typical Japanese diet, which is higher in omega-3s. Results of this premilinary study showed that the mice that consumed more omega-3s had half the amount of retinal disease. As a interesting aside, these findings may also impact the treatment and progression of the adult diseases diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration.

The next step of this study will involve giving omega-3 fatty acids to preemies in their IV nutrition. Interestingly, there is already an omega-3 rich IV formulation for preemies which is made in Germany. I spent a little time tonight searching the internet for a current comparison of ROP rates in the US versus Germany, but I haven’t come across anything yet. In the meantime, I’m very interested to hear about the results obtained by adding omega-3s to preemie IV nutrition. It seems obvious that this simple (and seemingly safe) change could improve both eye and brain development, two things that are both impacted by preterm delivery.