Patients on kidney dialysis are at a much greater cardiovascular risk than the general public, but a new study shows a simple supplement can dramatically reduce the chances of an adverse event. Researchers at Monash University in Australia found that daily fish oil intake cut the risk of serious cardiovascular events by almost half.

That's good news for the more than 500,000 people in the US who regularly undergo dialysis treatment.

Dubbed the PISCES trial, this study involved 1,228 participants across 26 dialysis sites in Australia and Canada. the results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study participants were given four grams of fish oil with the natural active ingredients EPA and DHA daily and the results were dramatic. Serious cardiovascular events were cut by 43 percent compared to the placebo group. The adverse events cut included heart attack, stroke, cardiac death and vascular related amputations.

"Patients on dialysis have extremely high cardiovascular risk, and very few therapies have been shown to reduce that risk," Professor Kevan Polkinghorne, nephrologist at Monash Health and lead investigator in the study said. "In a field where many trials have been negative, this is a significant finding.

"Dialysis patients typically have much lower levels of EPA and DHA than the general population. This may help explain the magnitude of benefit observed in this group."

While Polkinghorne said the findings are specific to those receiving dialysis for kidney failure, this study reaffirms the heart health benefits of fish oil seen in other trials including a wide variety of healthy participants.

Click here to read more in the New England Journal of Medicine.