Evaluating Fish Oil Efficacy for Osteoarthritis: A Case Study

This case study investigates the efficacy of fish oil in treating osteoarthritis, addressing a patient's inquiry about its benefits. The assignment employs the PICO framework to formulate a clinical question and guide the search for evidence. Two databases, Medline and CINAHL, are utilized to find relevant journal articles. The search strategy involves various search terms, Boolean operations, and limiters to refine the results. The study analyzes two selected articles that support the use of fish oil in reducing pain and inflammation associated with osteoarthritis, particularly in older women. The findings suggest that fish oil, especially omega-3 fatty acids, can be beneficial in managing arthritic symptoms. The assignment concludes by recommending fish oil as a potential intervention for the patient, Peggy, based on the available evidence.

Running head: USE OF FISH OIL IN ARTHRITIS
USE OF FISH OIL IN ARTHRITIS
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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USE OF FISH OIL IN ARTHRITIS
Introduction:
Healthcare professionals use evidence based journal articles in order to decide whether an
intervention is fruitful on the patients and that, it does not harm the patients. In the case study,
the patient Peggy wants to know that whether fish oil is effective for osteoarthritis and that
whether she can use it to relive her osteoarthritis symptoms
Depending upon the clinical question, databases should be searched properly so that good
evidences are available for the healthcare professional to suggest Peggy about the benefits of fish
oil.
Key words/search
terms/phrases
Alternative words/spelling
P Older women with
osteoarthritis
Older women suffering form
osteoarthritis, arthritis
affected old women, old
women having osteoarthritis
I Use of fish oil Intake of fish oil, ingestion of
fish oil capsules
C Those who do not take the
intervention
Older women who do not
take intervention, those who
fail to take in fish oil
O Gain relief Effective treatment, lowered

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USE OF FISH OIL IN ARTHRITIS
suffering, better quality life
The two databases that can be used to gain information for finding out the evidence of the
effectivity of fish oil would be the Medline plus and Cinahl. The main question that is to be
answers from the Pico framework is “Do older women suffering from osteoarthritis get benefits
from using fish oil in comparison to those patients who do not use the oil”? The first database
would be the Medline database. This database can be described as a bibliographic database. The
full form of the database is Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or
MEDLARS Online. This is utilsed by healthcare professionals and students of sciences as this
database mainly helps in the providing of different journal papers, books and articles. They also
help in providing medical information (Butler, Hall & Copnell, 2016). They also cover specific
domains like molecular evolution, biology and also biochemistry. It also covers medicine,
dentistry, nursing, pharmacy and the journals are used by lots of professionals and students for
publishing authentic papers. Another database which is highly preferred by healthcare
professionals is Cinahl. The full form of this database is called the Cumulative Index to
Nursing and Allied Health Literature. It has papers which are mainly in English language and
remain based on allied health, nursing and also healthcare and biomedicine. This site is very
much helpful to students as well as nursing professionals, young researchers and other
professionals for finding evidence based papers. They mainly keep papers which are not only
authentic but are also the work of some of the best quality researchers of the renowned
university. Moreover they have a filtered framework approach which helps in picking the right
papers successfully (Beckles et al., 2013). Therefore, Cinahl would be used for finding the right
paper here.

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USE OF FISH OIL IN ARTHRITIS
Table 2:
Actions Search mode Results Limiters (or
expanders)
S1 Fish oil AND arthritis
AND old women
Boolean operation:
AND
0 Expanders – to all
texts
Limiters – English
text, 1998 to 2010
S2 Fish oil AND arthritis
FOR old patients
Boolean operation:
AND
Truncation FOR
5 Expanders – to all
texts
Limiters – English
text, 1998 to 2010
S3 Fish oil IN
osteoarthritis patients
Truncation: IN
25 Expanders – to all
texts
Limiters – English
text, 1998 to 2017
S4 Fish oil given ON
patients WITH
osteoarthritis
20 Expanders – to all
texts
Limiters – English
text, 1998 to 2017

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USE OF FISH OIL IN ARTHRITIS
Truncation: ON
WITH
S5 Fish oil FOR old
patients WITH
osteoarthritis
Truncation: FOR,
WITH
12 Expanders – to all
texts
Limiters – English
text, 1998 to 2017
S6 Fish oil osteoarthritis
old people
No truncation:
No Boolean
operations:
13 Expanders – to all
texts
Limiters – English
text, 1998 to 2017
In the first search, it was seen that a large number of papers were provided by the
database as no particular limiters or extenders were provided. There were also many articles
which did not at all meet with the criteria of the PICO questions. Therefore, it was very
important to narrow out our searches with the right types of papers that would suit with the PICO
question. After the thorough search, articles numbers reduced and the articles which were

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USE OF FISH OIL IN ARTHRITIS
ultimately found were aligning with the PICO questions. Out of the new articles, two articles
were selected which are as follows:
Peanpadungrat, P. (2015). Efficacy and safety of fish oil in treatment of knee
osteoarthritis. J Med Assoc Thai, 98(Suppl 3), S110-14.
In this article, the author had correctly helped in making readers know that fish oil taken in the
amount of to 1000 to 2000 Mg daily help in the reduction of pain in the adults and increase of
doses do not have any different effects in comparison to that of low dose of fish oil.
El-Fatah, N. K. A., Kheder, S. M. M., El-Sayed, N. A. E. R., & Helal, A. E. M. H. (2016).
Effect of Omega 3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Supplementation on Osteoarthritic Knees
among Females. International Journal of Health Sciences and Research (IJHSR), 6(4), 362-
369.
An important information was provided by the authors where they used fish oil which contains
omega three fatty acids for the test of its efficacy on treatment with knee osteoarthritis in women
who were aged 40 to 25 years old.. it suggested that a dose of 2000 mg omega 3 PUFA has
significant effect on the inhibition of inflammation and helps in reduction of arthritic symptoms.
Therefore the patient can be advised to take fish oil as it has benefitting effect on osteoarthritis
pain and management.

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USE OF FISH OIL IN ARTHRITIS
References:
Beckles, Z., Glover, S., Ashe, J., Stockton, S., Boynton, J., Lai, R., & Alderson, P. (2013).
Searching CINAHL did not add value to clinical questions posed in NICE
guidelines. Journal of clinical epidemiology, 66(9), 1051-1057.
Butler, A., Hall, H., & Copnell, B. (2016). A Guide to Writing a Qualitative Systematic Review
Protocol to Enhance Evidence‐Based Practice in Nursing and Health Care. Worldviews
on Evidence
‐Based Nursing, 13(3), 241-249.
El-Fatah, N. K. A., Kheder, S. M. M., El-Sayed, N. A. E. R., & Helal, A. E. M. H. (2016). Effect
of Omega 3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids Supplementation on Osteoarthritic Knees
among Females. International Journal of Health Sciences and Research (IJHSR), 6(4),
362-369.
Peanpadungrat, P. (2015). Efficacy and safety of fish oil in treatment of knee osteoarthritis. J
Med Assoc Thai, 98(Suppl 3), S110-14.