Could Dairy Intake Actually Lower CVD Risk?

Eating more dairy products is associated with a lower risk of major cardiovascular events and mortality, according to a recent study.

Due to the presence of saturated fats and presumed ill effects on lipids, dietary guidelines recommend minimizing the consumption of whole-fat dairy products. However, little data on the effects of dairy consumption on the health of individuals living in low-income and middle-income countries are available.

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In the Prospective urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, a multinational cohort study of individuals aged 25 to 70 years, the researchers collected data on the dietary intake of dairy products for 136,384 individuals via validated food frequency questionnaires. The primary outcome was the composite of mortality or major cardiovascular events, including death from cardiovascular causes, non-fatal myocardial infarction, stroke, or heart failure.

Overall, 10,567 composite events were recorded during the 9.1 years of follow-up. The researchers observed that a higher intake of dairy (>2 servings a day compared with no intake) was associated with a lower risk of the composite outcome (hazard ratio [HR] 0.84), total mortality (0.83), non-cardiovascular mortality (0.86), cardiovascular mortality (0.77) major cardiovascular disease (0.78) and stroke (0.66). Myocardial infarction was not significantly affected.

Further, higher intake of milk and yogurt was associated with lower risk of the copositive outcome, while cheese intake was not.

“Dairy consumption was associated with lower risk of mortality and major cardiovascular disease events in a diverse multinational cohort.”

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Dehghan M, Mente A, Rangarajan S, et al. Association of dairy intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 21 countries from five continents (PURE): a prospective cohort study [published online September 11, 2018]. Lancet. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31812-9