Fatty acids and neuropsychiatric disorders

In 1937, after qualifying as a medical doctor and before taking up his appointment as a fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, Hugh Sinclair visited Herbert Evans, the codiscoverer with Katherine Scott Bishop of vitamin E, and became interested in the possibility that some fatty acid deficiencies might account for the rise in ischaemic heart disease in the Western world [1,2]. In his research letter entitled 'Deficiency of essential fatty acids and atherosclerosis, etcetera' published in the Lancet in 1956 [3], Sinclair provided evidence that cardiovascular disease and, in particular, atherosclerosis, might be associated with a deficiency of what we now call long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids; he suggested that the etcetera pointed to the likelihood that diseases other than cardiovascular disease might be related to a deficiency in fatty acids [2,3]. One of his students at Oxford, David Horrobin, was instrumental in establishing a theoretical framework demonstrating that this might be true of neuropsychiatric disorders [4]. In turn, it was my very great privilege and honour to collaborate with, and be taught by, the late David Horrobin while establishing that fatty acid interventions might indeed have a therapeutic part to play in neuropsychiatric disorders ranging from depression to Huntington's disease (chorea) [5,6].