What’s New with Omega-3 Fatty Acids and COVID-19?
Richard Choi, MD, FRCP(C); Subodh Verma, MD, PhD, FRCSC, FAHA
Topics: COVID-19, Omega-3
Details
Objectives
The Biology of Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Icosapent Ethyl (IPE) (Dr. Richard Choi)
The rationale and study design of the Vascepa COVID-19 Trial (Dr. Subodh Verma)
- To appreciate the potential therapeutic benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids and its derivatives
- Examine the latest findings of clinical trials implementing therapies with Omega-3 fatty acids and its derivatives
- Understand how these therapies may fit into the current COVID-19 pandemic
Faculty
Richard Choi MD, FRCP(C)
Dr. Richard Choi is a clinician-educator. He completed his residency training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the University of Toronto. He is staff cardiologist at Unity Health Toronto, St. Joseph's Health Centre and Lecturer in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He has a general cardiology practice in west Toronto and has an interest in medical education. He has been involved in developing and presenting multiple educational initiatives for primary care physicians and specialists in all aspects of cardiovascular medicine.
Subodh Verma MD, PhD, FRCSC, FAHA
Dr Subodh Verma is an internationally renowned cardiac surgeon-scientist and Professor at the University of Toronto. He is the Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Surgery and a past recipient of the Howard Morgan Award for Distinguished Achievements in Cardiovascular Research and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Gold Medal in Surgery. He served as Canada Research Chair in Atherosclerosis for 10 years from 2007-2017. He is an appointee of the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons (AATS) and a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, Royal Society of Canada. According to Google Scholar, Dr Verma’s work has been cited over 51,000 times resulting in an h-index of 100.
Dr Verma has published numerous times in prestigious journals like the NEJM, Lancet, Circulation, JBC, JACC, Nature, and JCI. He continues to be an active contributor to several CCS guidelines; he co-authored the 2018 Diabetes Canada guidelines as well as the 2018 AATS consensus guidelines on bicuspid aortic valve-related aortopathy. Dr Verma has served on the American Heart Association Council on Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia since 2008.
Dr Verma has leadership roles on 7 ongoing global heart failure trials in diabetes – DAPA-HF, DELIVER, DETERMINE-A, DETERMINE-B, EMPEROR-Preserved, EMPEROR-Reduced and SOLOIST-WHF – as well as the SELECT (semaglutide) and CLEAR SYNERGY (OASIS 9) trials. He oversees the CardioLink platform that is conducting surgically oriented RCTs and translational studies.
Dr Verma oversees a dynamic pre-clinical and translational research team that leverages pre-clinical disease models and clinical trial-derived data to identify novel mediators of cardiovascular and cardiometabolic disease as well as answer timely and relevant healthcare questions. This research has yielded 2 United States patents and is currently supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and HSF.