Abstract
Background: Calcium is an essential element in our diet and the most abundant mineral in the body. A high proportion of Chinese residents are not meeting dietary calcium recommendations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between calcium intake and the health of residents in two longitudinal studies of Chinese residents.Methods: This study used nationally representative data from the Harbin Cohort Study on Diet, Nutrition, and Chronic Non-communicable Disease Study (HDNNCDS) and China Health Nutrition Survey (CHNS), including 6,499 and 8,140 Chinese adults, respectively, who were free of chronic diseases at recruitment, with mean values of 4.2- and 5.3-year follow-up. Cox's proportional-hazards regression was conducted to explore the relationship between dietary calcium intake and the incidence of obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) with adjustment for covariates.Results: Calcium intakes were 451.35 ± 203.56 and 484.32 ± 198.61 (mean ± SD) mg/day in HDNNCDS and CHNS. After adjusting the covariates, the relationship between dietary calcium intake and bone mineral density (BMD) was not statistically significant (p = 0.110). In the multivariate-adjusted Cox's proportional-hazards regression model, dietary calcium intakes were inversely associated with obesity incidence in both cohorts (HR [95% CI]: 0.61 [0.48–0.77] and p trend < 0.001 in fixed-effects model); nevertheless, there was no correlation between dietary calcium intake and the risk of type 2 diabetes (p trend = 0.442 and 0.759) and CVD (p trend = 0.826 and 0.072). The relationship between dietary calcium intake and the risk of hypertension in the two cohorts was inconsistent (p trend = 0.012 and 0.559). Additionally, after further adjusting the vegetable intake in the original multivariate model, both cohorts found no association between dietary calcium intake and the risk of developing obesity (p trend = 0.084 and 0.444).Conclusions: Our data suggest that the current calcium intake of Chinese residents was inversely associated with obesity, which may be related to consumption of vegetables. Meanwhile, the current calcium intake does not increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, CVD, and bone health burden. This research suggested that the Chinese current calcium intake level may have met the needs of the body.
Highlights
Calcium is an essential nutrient in the human body
In HDNNCDS and CHNS, we found dietary calcium was inversely associated with the incidence of obesity; there was no correlation between dietary calcium intake and bone density, and the incidence of T2DM and CVD
The results indicated that the association between dietary calcium intake and the risk of obesity was significant in both HDNNCDS and CHNS
Summary
Calcium is an essential nutrient in the human body. Adequate calcium intake is essential for the normal growth and development of bones and the necessary physiological functions [1]. The current reference recommended intake of dietary calcium for Chinese residents is 800 mg/day [8]. The Chinese recommended intake of calcium has been formulated based primarily on reference to the US standard, which is only slightly lower than the US at the time of formulation given the differences in bone mass between the Chinese and US populations [9]. Given the limitation and inconsistency of evidence, the relationship between dietary calcium and health in the normal population remains unclear. Most previous studies on the association between calcium intake and chronic disease have been conducted in Western populations [12], with only limited evidence in Chinese, despite a steadily increasing prevalence of chronic disease over the past decade. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between calcium intake and the health of residents in two longitudinal studies of Chinese residents
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