Omega-3s to Prevent Alzheimer's: Who Benefits?

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Richard S. Isaacson, MD: I'm Dr Richard Isaacson, and on behalf of Medscape, I'm here interviewing someone whose work I've really admired and followed for years now: Dr Hussein Yassine.

He's an associate professor of both medicine and neurology at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. He's an internist and an endocrinologist by trade, but we somehow tricked him into helping us figure out the complexities around Alzheimer's and in the brain.

Hussein, thanks so much for being here today on Medscape.

Hussein Yassine, MD: Thank you. My pleasure. I appreciate the invitation.

Isaacson: I saw you speak about 4 or 5 years ago now at the Clinical Trials in Alzheimer's meeting. You also had a paper in JAMA Neurology back in [2017] showing that with omega-3 fatty acids, whether it's DHA or EPA, you may not want to take a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to Alzheimer's prevention, which your brand-new paper suggests as well.

Take us back a couple of years and give a summary of what your research found and why, in patients who are at risk for Alzheimer's diseaseor even in patients in the earliest stages, omega-3 fatty acids may be a really important therapeutic target.