| Summary: | The prolonged bleeding times (1) and protection against thrombosis found in Eskimos (2) is thought to be related to a marine diet rich in c0-3-fatty acids (3). Recently, fish oil diets have been shown to modify the course of rheumatoid arthritis (4). In animal models of disease, diet enrichment with eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), ~ an c0-3-fatty acid present in fish oil, protected the NZB/NZW mouse from glomerular nephritis (5), though augmenting susceptibility of rats to type II collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) (6). CIA is suspected of being immunologically mediated, in that anticollagen antibodies seem to be a necessary, if not sufficient, requirement for disease induction (7). Antigenic recognition of collagen, and amplification of the response requires a complex interplay of chemical signals and cell-cell interactions (8). Evidence is accumulating that prostaglandins (PG) are among such intercellular mediators operating at several levels of the response (9). Macrophages, besides initiating the immune response, also produce large quantities of PG (10, 1 1), and are unique in that they contain high levels of esterified arachidonic acid
|
|---|