Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids
CommentaryLinoleic acid recommendations—A house of cards
Section snippets
EFA deficiency—a flawed model for linoleic acid requirements
When Burr and Burr [1] showed that linoleic acid could correct or prevent the symptoms of dietary fat deficiency in the rat, linoleic acid was rightfully accepted as an ‘essential fatty acid’ (EFA). Research in this field developed rapidly and climaxed in the 1960s with meticulous dose–response studies on the effects and correction of EFA deficiency, particularly from Ralph Holman's group. There were several versions of the EFA deficient diet but all of them unintentionally excluded both
Linoleic acid metabolism
If linoleic acid is a villain, it is widely presumed that its detrimental effects would be via ‘pro-inflammatory’ oxidized or peroxidized downstream metabolites derived from both linoleic acid and its longer chain homolog, arachidonic acid. If so, some measurable flow from dietary linoleic acid through arachidonic acid to such metabolites would be necessary to show that raised linoleic acid intake raises these pro-inflammatory metabolites. However, on average, reported conversion of linoleic
Our recommendations
Our recommendations are to: (i) Discard the term EFA (including its use in the name of this journal!)—it is not doing researchers or the public any favours [9]. (ii) Use 13C-linoleic acid in humans to more thoroughly study its metabolism through to arachidonic acid and their respective downstream cascades. (iii) Do an appropriately-powered, controlled dose–response study in adult humans with the aim of demonstrating whether higher dietary linoleic acid really stimulates pro-inflammatory
Acknowledgements
NSERC, FRSQ and the Canada Research Chairs funded SCC's research on this topic.
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