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Dairy intake associated with reduced diabetes risk
In Chinese adults, increased dairy intake was associated with a reduced risk for developing type 2 diabetes, with daily milk drinkers seeing a 12% reduction in risk vs. nondrinkers, according to published findings.
“Calcium may have a potential preventive role against glycemia and weight gain, and since dairy food is a rich source for calcium, this mineral may be the mediating factor that accounts for the inverse association between dairy intake and [type 2 diabetes] in observational studies,” Mohammad Talaei, MD, MPH, of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at National University of Singapore, and colleagues wrote. “Asian populations tend to have generally lower dairy intake and more varied dietary sources of calcium, but findings that attempted to differentiate the effects of calcium from dairy food in such populations have yielded conflicting results.”
Talaei and colleagues analyzed data from 63,257 Chinese adults aged 45 to 74 years without diabetes at baseline enrolled in the Singapore Chinese Health Study between 1993 and 1998 (35,303 women). At baseline, participants completed a validated, 165-item, semiquantitative food-frequency questionnaire; type 2 diabetes status was reported by participants during two follow-up phone interviews in 1999-2004 and 2006-2010. Researchers used Cox proportional hazard regression analysis to estimate HRs in 45,411 eligible participants (mean age, 55 years; 42.7% men).
During a mean follow-up time of 12 years, 5,207 participants developed type 2 diabetes, for an incidence rate of 10.5 per 1,000 person-years. The mean dairy intake was 20.5 g per day; most participants reported having never or hardly ever drinking milk (67.4%). Within the cohort, 6,757 (14.9%) reported daily milk intake; 93.5% of those reported consuming one glass of milk per day.
Researchers found that overall dairy intake was associated with a 10% reduction in risk for developing type 2 diabetes after adjustment for dietary patterns, coffee and soda intake. Comparing daily milk drinkers with nondrinkers, daily milk intake was associated with a 12% decrease in type 2 diabetes risk (HR = 0.88; 95% CI, 0.81-0.96).
For overall dairy calcium intake, those in the highest quartile had a 16% reduced risk for developing type 2 diabetes vs. those in the lowest quartile (HR = 0.84; 95% CI, 0.76-0.93), but researchers did not observe an association between nondairy calcium intake and diabetes risk (P for trend = .61).
“We found a modest but statistically significant inverse association between dairy intake, especially daily milk intake, and risk of [type 2 diabetes],” the researchers wrote. “While nondairy sources substantially contributed to total calcium intake in this population, the association between nondairy calcium intake and [type 2 diabetes] was null. Thus, the potential beneficial impact of dairy on [type 2 diabetes] risk was likely to be accounted for by other components and not by its calcium content.” – by Regina Schaffer
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.