06 Why Study Design Matters

EPISODE #6 - Why Omega-3 Study Design MattersRecording date: March 30, 2021Broadcast date: June 10th, 2021                                                             Hosts: Drs. Bill Harris & Kristina Harris JacksonGuest: Nathan Tintle, PhDBackground and key takeaways:The way studies are designed, especially when it comes to omega-3 fatty acids, is very important when it comes to pinpointing their value in human health. However, because they are nutrients and not drugs, they don’t always hold up when it comes to the gold standard (i.e., randomized controlled trial, or RCT) way of studying substances and measuring them against health outcomes. Sometimes different kinds of studies can yield better learnings about nutrients, such as prospective studies (looking in the future) and retrospective studies (looking back in time), and then there is always the observational study that has a power all its own. In this episode, Drs. Bill Harris and Kristina Harris Jackson go deep into the world of research to understand the nuances of clinical studies with the help of biostatistical expert, Dr. Nathan Tintle. He says the two most important questions you need to ask when reading a study are: 1) Who are the people in the study and can I generalize the findings from them? And 2) Can I make a cause and effect conclusion from this study? One of the advantages of these other studies (i.e., prospective, observational, etc.) vs. an RCT in nutrition, and particularly in the omega-3 space, is that there are better conclusions to draw about prevention. In other words, the majority of omega-3 studies seem to point to benefits for those who have maintained a lifetime of high omega-3 levels. Guest bio: Dr. Tintle holds a PhD in statistics from Stony Brook University. He has internationally recognized expertise in fatty acids, public health, genetics, and biomedical statistics via study design, survey instrument development, and standard and computationally intensive data analysis techniques. He has >100 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Tintle also brings prior relevant experience as an executive director of a non-profit, research institute. As a researcher and research institute director he has led initiatives securing over $8 million of funding across 30+ major federally funded grant awards, in addition to securing substantial private and public charitable donations.To watch this episode, visit our YouTube channel.For more information about OmegaMatters, visit https://omegaquant.com/omegamatters-broadcasts/.To learn more about omega-3 testing, visit: https://omegaquant.com/omega-3-index-complete/