Omega 3 fatty acids on child growth, visual acuity and neurodevelopment Campoy Folgoso, Cristina Escolano Margarit, María Victoria Gomes Anjos, Tania Szajewska, Hania Uauy Dagach, Ricardo Omega-3 Fatty Acids Pregnancy Lactation Infant formula Term infants Neurodevelopment Visual acuity Growth The publication of the supplement was supported by PULEVA Food, S.L. No conflicts of interest are declared. All coauthors contributed to the initial protocol of the review. CC, VE and TA were responsible for the literature searched, study selection, methodological quality assessment, and data extraction. HS and RU supervised the methodological quality assessment and all authors contributed to the data interpretation and writing of the final report. CC (coordinator), VE, TA and HS are researchers in the EU Project funded by FP7 European Commission - DG Research. Directorate E - Life Sciences: Theme 2 Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Biotechnology. Grant agreement no : FP7-212652-NUTRIMENTHE. The aim of this review is to evaluate the effects of omega-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 LCPUFA) supplementation in pregnant and lactating women and infants during postnatal life, on the visual acuity, psychomotor development, mental performance and growth of infants and children. Eighteen publications (11 sets of randomized control clinical trial [RCTs]) assessed the effects of the n-3 LCPUFA supplementation during pregnancy on neurodevelopment and growth, in the same subjects at different time points; 4 publications (2 data sets from RCTs) addressed physiological responses to n-3 LCPUFA supplementation during pregnancy & lactation and 5 publications (3 data sets from RCTs) exclusively during lactation. Some of these studies showed beneficial effects of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) supplementation during pregnancy and/or lactation especially on visual acuity outcomes and some on long-term neurodevelopment; a few, showed positive effects on growth. There were also 15 RCTs involving term infants who received infant formula supplemented with DHA, which met our selection criteria. Many of these studies claimed a beneficial effect of such supplementation on visual, neural, or developmental outcomes and no effects on growth. Although new well designed and conducted studies are being published, evidence from RCTs does not demonstrate still a clear and consistent benefit of n-3 LCPUFA supplementation during pregnancy and/or lactation on term infants growth, neurodevelopment and visual acuity. These results should be interpreted with caution due to methodological limitations of the included studies 2020-07-16T07:49:56Z 2020-07-16T07:49:56Z 2012-06 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Campoy, C., Escolano-Margarit, M. V., Anjos, T., Szajewska, H., & Uauy, R. (2012). Omega 3 fatty acids on child growth, visual acuity and neurodevelopment. British Journal of Nutrition, 107(S2), S85-S106. [doi:10.1017/S0007114512001493] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/62995 10.1017/S0007114512001493 eng EC/FP7/212652-NUTRIMENTHE http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España Cambridge University Press