Omega-3 plus vitamins may prevent bed sores in hospitals

Bed sores, which afflict up to one-tenth of hospital patients, may be prevented by adding key supplements to a standard hospital diet, reports new research from the journal Clinical Nutrition, looked at the effects of supplementing the with the fatty acids eicosapentanoic acid (EPA) and gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) and vitamins A, C, and E on pressure ulcers in patients hospitalized with an acute lung injury.

Lead author Miryam Theilla from Rabin Medical Center, in collaboration with researchers from Tel Aviv University, randomly assigned 100 patients to receive the normal hospital diet or the normal diet supplemented with lipids and vitamins.

Theilla and co-workers report that at the end of the seven-day study, the number of pressure ulcers in the control group increased by 24, but by only 15 in the intervention group.

"A diet enriched with EPA, GLA and vitamins A, C and E is associated with a significantly lower occurrence of new pressure ulcers in critically ill patients with acute lung injury," they wrote.