Fish Consumption Linked With Better Survival Outcomes in Colon Cancer

This video examines the results of a prospective study that looked at associations between survival outcomes and fish and omega-3 fatty acid intake among colon cancer patients.

In this video, Erin Van Blarigan, ScD, of the University of California, San Francisco, discusses the results of a prospective study that looked at associations between survival outcomes and fish and long-chain omega-3 fatty acid intake after a colon cancer diagnosis.

The study included 1,011 stage III colon cancer patients who were part of an adjuvant chemotherapy trial, and found that patients who consumed dark meat fish at least twice per month had longer recurrence-free survival (hazard ratio [HR], 0.61; 0.44–0.83; P = .005), disease-free survival (HR, 0.64; 0.48–0.86; P = .007), and overall survival (HR, 0.68; 0.48–0.97; P = .05) compared with those who consumed no fish. The study also found that in patients with COX2 tumor expression, long-chain omega-3 fatty acid was associated with improved disease-free survival.

Results of the study (abstract 585) were presented last month at the 2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium in San Francisco.