This is exciting, and should be fairly easy to confirm/deny with a double blind trial in humans. There's no money to be had in it for big pharma, so funding it would have to come from some other means, but it should be possible.
> Fish oil supplementation has been noted to be comparable to pharmaceutical drugs (fluoxetine) in majorly depressed persons, but this may be the only cohort that experiences a reduction of depression. There is insufficient evidence to support a reduction of depressive symptoms in persons with minor depression (ie. not diagnosed major depressive disorder)
They give it a B for the research and an effect size of moderate improvement. Also a B with a small effect size for anxiety.
https://examine.com/supplements/fish-oil
I’d note it also says:
> A meta-analysis of 35 small, randomized trials found that fish oil can slightly improve depression when compared to control. However, this improvement may be too small to be noticeable. Also, adding fish oil to antidepressant medication seems to be more beneficial than antidepressant treatment alone
In short, sounds like it’s worth throwing in as an adjunct treatment for people wanting to take a kitchen sink approach
To be fair, this is among the most highly rated things on the entire site - let not the "B" scare you off. A moderate effect size is pretty substantial, all things considered.
IIRC there's several patent medicine versions of omega 3 such as icosapent ethyl