Nutraceuticals against cardiovascular diseases

Today, the leading cause of death worldwide is what we call cardiovascular diseases (CVD). To put it into perspective, Covid-19 was the cause of death for approximately 7.01 million deaths in six years. The number of deaths due to CVD is 17.9 million every year; it is the most lethal disease. In Ireland alone, 10,000 people die every year, i.e. one person per hour. It’s a huge loss of human lives and also a considerable burden for HSE.

Our group has been working towards a sustainable solution against CVD by focusing on the aggregation of platelets. This aggregation triggers the formation of thrombus (i.e. blockage in human arteries) and the onset of CVD. We have developed a novel extract from farmed Irish organic salmon fillets rich in lipids (i.e. high content of fat); the extract was put in a capsule and its ability to platelets’ aggregation was tested, by carrying out two small scale human trials. In these trials, healthy volunteers were recruited. The first trial showed that the lipids reach the bloodstream within hours. At the second trial, the volunteers were provided daily a capsule containing 130mg of the extract. This is a very low dosage that shows the high potency of this extract to reduce platelets’ aggregation. The results of the second trial indicated that this supplementation caused a considerable decrease of the tendency of platelets to aggregate (in the region of 30%).

Our source was aquacultured (farmed) salmon in Ireland; this is an environmentally sustainable source. These two features (environmental sustainability and high potency) make this extract a potential candidate to protect people from the development of CVD.