Ready-to-eat therapeutic foods with rich fish oil may significantly improve brain development in many malnourished children and infants, stated by a triple-blind, randomized, controlled clinical feeding trail.
The addition of DHA-rich fish oil in ready-to-eat therapeutic foods (RUTF) helps to improve child and infant’s nutritional status during the first 1000 days of life and also help to improve short and long-term cognitive performance, schooling, and other cognitive related activities. It also led to significant improvements in global developmental scores, driven by gross motor and social scores in children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM). A few examples of gross motor skills include unassisted hopping, walking or tossing a ball, and social skills which include drinking from a cup or intentional pointing.
“The above study provides the first direct evidence that reduction in (linoleic acid) and addition of DHA in RUTF enhances cognition in severe acute malnutrition (SAM) children” wrote by an authors, led by Meghan Callaghan and Kevin Stephenson from Washington University in St. Louis. “This finding is consonant with a body of evidence that extends over many methodologies, species and many decades.
“The need to improve cognitive recovery in SAM is very crucial, substantial, as this may also affect tens of millions of children annually.”
Prenatal exposure to DHA may contribute to improved sustained attention in preschool children.
85 million children…
Authors noted that about 85 million children around the whole world will develop a very severe acute malnutrition during their first five years which leads to mental and physical development delays.
The standard care for SAM is a vegetable oil-rich, peanut-based ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) but these do not contain long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, which are important for brain development in children and infants. The new study compared the brain development in over 2, 500 children in Malawi with SAM consuming RUTF fortified with DHA-rich fish oil.
Study details
The six-month study included around 2, 565 children suffering from SAM, and randomly assigned them to one of the three groups: The first group had received a standard RUTF; the second group received a high-oleic acid RUTF fortified with DHA. While the third group had received the high-oleic acid RUTF fortified with DHA.
The omega-3 content of the food as a percentage of energy was around 1.0%, 3.0% and 4.0% respectively. The scores obtained from Malawi Developmental Assessment Tool (MDAT) showed that all the children experienced positive benefits of all the RUTF interventions, also these were sustained after the six months of study. However, the improvements in the global development scores were significantly in the higher range in the DHA-fed group compared to the other two groups. Additionally, the DHA-Fed children had higher gross motor and also social scores compared to the standard RUTF. Children who were in group 2 were found to have a higher range of social scores than those receiving the standard RUTF.
The researchers noted that the data predicted that “Changing the composition of RUTF to reduce the insult of SAM is safe, effective and feasible.”
Dr. Tom Brenna, co-senior study author and a professor of pediatrics at the Dell Pediatric Research Institute, the University of Texas at Austin, added that “Our study shows that balanced fats and including omega-3 DHA is very important for long-term mental development in the 16 million children who suffers annually from a very severe acute malnutrition. DHA supplementation improves memory and the RT of memory in healthy, young adults whose habitual diets were low in DHA.
“As Foremost, this study also highlights the role of nutrition specifically for the development of brain in all children and infants.’’
Intake of high of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids may help to protect against age-related cognitive decline.
References-
- Stephenson K, Callaghan-Gillespie M, Maleta K, Nkhoma M, George M, Park HG, Lee R, Humphries-Cuff I, Lacombe RS, Wegner DR, Canfield RL. Low linoleic acid foods with added DHA given to Malawian children with severe acute malnutrition improve cognition: a randomized, triple-blinded, controlled clinical trial. The American journal of clinical nutrition. 2022 May;115(5):1322-33.
- Ramakrishnan U, Gonzalez-Casanova I, Schnaas L, DiGirolamo A, Quezada AD, Pallo BC, Hao W, Neufeld LM, Rivera JA, Stein AD, Martorell R. Prenatal supplementation with DHA improves attention at 5 y of age: a randomized controlled trial. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2016 Oct 1;104(4):1075-82.
- Stonehouse W, Conlon CA, Podd J, Hill SR, Minihane AM, Haskell C, Kennedy D. DHA supplementation improved both memory and reaction time in healthy young adults: a randomized controlled trial. The American of Clinical Nutrition. 2013 May 1;97(5):1134-43.
- van de Rest O, Geleijnse JM, Kok FJ, van Staveren WA, Dullemeijer C, OldeRikkert MG, Beekman AT, De Groot CP. Effect of fish oil on cognitive performance in older subjects: a randomized, controlled trial. Neurology. 2008 Aug 5;71(6):430-8.
