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Bang and Dyerberg’s omega-3 discovery turns fifty

Nature Food volume 2, pages 303–305 (2021)Cite this article

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Fifty years ago, in 1971, Bang and Dyerberg published their first landmark paper on the Greenland Inuit. In the introduction, they stated their goal2:

“In an attempt to describe in detail the serum lipids in Eskimos and perhaps explain the low incidence of ischemic heart-disease in these people, we undertook an expedition to the north-west coast of Greenland in August and September 1970, in order to examine the serum-lipid pattern in Eskimos, hoping that the findings would throw some light on the pathogenetic role of serum lipids in atherosclerotic diseases, especially ischemic heart disease, in the Western world.”

“In an attempt to describe in detail the serum lipids in Eskimos and perhaps explain the low incidence of ischemic heart-disease in these people, we undertook an expedition to the north-west coast of Greenland in August and September 1970, in order to examine the serum-lipid pattern in Eskimos, hoping that the findings would throw some light on the pathogenetic role of serum lipids in atherosclerotic diseases, especially ischemic heart disease, in the Western world.”

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Fig. 1: Fieldwork.

copyright J. Dyerberg, used with permission.

Fig. 2: The most published molecules in medicine.

References

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank J. Dyerberg for permission to reprint the photograph in Fig. 1, and A. Bernasconi (Global Organization for EPA and DHA Omega-3) for providing the PubMed data for Fig. 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fatty Acid Research Institute, Sioux Falls, SD, USA

    William S. Harris

  2. Department of Internal Medicine, Sanford School of Medicine, University of South Dakota, Sioux Falls, SD, USA

    William S. Harris

  3. School of Human Development and Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Philip C. Calder

  4. NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust and University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Philip C. Calder

  5. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA, USA

    Dariush Mozaffarian

  6. Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Reperfusion Injury, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Charles N. Serhan

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  4. Charles N. Serhan
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Contributions

W.S.H. wrote the first draft and then P.C.C., D.M. and C.N.S. made substantive edits.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to William S. Harris.

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Competing interests

W.S.H. holds an interest in OmegaQuant Analytics, LLC, a laboratory that offers omega-3 blood testing. D.M. reports research funding from the National Institutes of Health, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation; personal fees from Acasti Pharma, America’s Test Kitchen, Barilla, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Danone, GOED, and Motif FoodWorks; scientific advisory board, Beren Therapeutics, Brightseed, Calibrate, DayTwo (ended June 2020), Elysium Health, Filtricine, Foodome, HumanCo, January Inc., Perfect Day, Season, and Tiny Organics; and chapter royalties from UpToDate; all outside the present work. P.C.C. has received research funding from BASF and acts as a consultant to BASF, Smartfish, DSM, Cargill, Danone/Nutricia and Fresenius-Kabi. C.N.S. reports no competing interests.

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Harris, W.S., Calder, P.C., Mozaffarian, D. et al. Bang and Dyerberg’s omega-3 discovery turns fifty. Nat Food 2, 303–305 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00289-7

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