Baseline omega-3 index correlates with aggressive and attention deficit behaviours in adult prisoners

摘要

Background/Aims: There is no published data on the omega-3 index inprison populations in relation to mental health.We aim to determine if thevariance of the baseline omega-3 index is correlated with aggressive andattention deficit behaviours in a prison population.Methods: One hundred and thirty six adult male prisoners were recruitedfrom South Coast Correctional Centre (SCCC), NSW Australia. A 7-pointcategorisation was used to quantify levels of aggressive behaviour (fourweeks) from individual SCCC case notes, whereby higher scores correspondto increasingly aggressive behaviour. At baseline, study participantscompleted an Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) and the Brown’s AttentionDeficit Disorder Scales (BADDS), provided a blood sample for erythrocytefatty acid analysis using GC and the omega-3 index was calculated.Results: The baseline omega-3 index ranged from 2.3% to 10.3% with amedian of 4.7%, indicating that some participants already had substantialomega-3 intake. Assessment of aggressive and attention deficit behaviourshows that there were negative correlations between baseline omega-3index and baseline aggression categorisation scores (r? 0.21, p ? 0.016);total AQ score (r ? 0.234, p ? 0.011); Anger (r ? 0.222, p ? 0.016);Hostility AQ (r ? 0.239, p ? 0.009); indirect aggression (r ? 0.188 p ?0.042); total BADDS (r ? 0.263, p ? 0.005); Activation (r ? 0.224, p ?0.016); Attention (r ? 0.192, p ? 0.043); Effort (r ? 0.253, p ? 0.007);Affect (r ? 0.330, p < 0.001) and Memory (r ? 0.240, p ? 0.010).Conclusions: There is a high variability on baseline omega-3 status of aNSW prison population, and inmates with lower omega-3 index weremore aggressive and had higher ADD scores.