Increased omega-3 intake significantly improves women's chances of pregnancy and fertilization rates.
The methodology involved retrieving articles from databases like PubMed, Clinical Trials, CINAHL/EBSCO, Medline Complete, and Cochrane Library, published up to April 2021 using keywords related to omega-3, fertilization, and pregnancy. The selection criteria included studies that reported female fertility occurring naturally or intracytoplasmic sperm injection techniques concurrent with omega-3 intake, excluding retrospective studies, studies featuring postmenopausal women, or those with unevenly matched research groups. A meta-analysis was conducted using the extracted odds ratios of clinical pregnancies and fertilization rates from each study.
The results, drawn from six fertility treatment-related trials with 1789 women, four trials with 2607 women who conceived naturally, and three further trials involving 1725 oocytes for fertility rates, consistently show the beneficial effects of omega-3. These findings, however, exhibited a high degree of heterogeneity, suggesting variable factors across the studies might have influenced the outcomes.
