Abstract
Diet has gained attention as a risk factor for the development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), especially with regards to food of animal origin, such as meat and dairy products. By using data from national patient registers and dietary data from a large prospective population cohort, the Swedish Mammography Cohort, we aimed to investigate whether the consumption of meat and dairy products had any impact on the risk of subsequent development of RA. During 12 years of follow-up (January 2003–December 2014; 381, 456 person-years), 368 patients with a new diagnosis of RA were identified. No associations between the development of RA and the consumption of meat and meat products (hazard ratio [HR] for the fully adjusted model: 1.08 [95% CI: 0.77–1.53]) or the total consumption of milk and dairy products (HR for the fully adjusted model: 1.09 [95% CI: 0.76–1.55]) were observed. In conclusion, in this large prospective cohort of women, no associations were observed between dietary intake of meat and dairy products and the risk of RA development.
Highlights
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic chronic form of autoimmune arthritis in which both genetic and environmental factors contribute [1,2,3]
Consumption of dairy and meat products in the studied cohort was common with approximately 52% consuming meat products more than once per day, and approximately 80% of the population consuming dairy products more than thrice per week
Consumption of meat and meat products was not associated with the development of RA in age-adjusted (hazard ratio (HR) = 0.96), or multivariable adjusted models (HR = 1.08)
Summary
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic chronic form of autoimmune arthritis in which both genetic and environmental factors contribute [1,2,3]. It affects between approximately 0.5% and 1%. The consumption of meat as a risk factor for RA development was scientifically first investigated in an ecological study [6]. Milk and dairy products have been suggested as risk factors, mainly due to the hypersensitive allergic responses in two case reports [10,11] and in a rat model of inflammatory arthritis [12]. Prospective studies in humans have not been able to verify this; instead, a trend towards an inverse association between the consumption of dairy products and risk for RA has been described [13]
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