Abstract
BackgroundThe relation between consumption of different types of dairy and risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) remains uncertain. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the association between total dairy and individual types of dairy consumptions and incident T2D in US adults.MethodsWe followed 41,436 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986 to 2010), 67,138 women in the Nurses’ Health Study (1980 to 2010), and 85,884 women in the Nurses’ Health Study II (1991 to 2009). Diet was assessed by validated food-frequency questionnaires, and data were updated every four years. Incident T2D was confirmed by a validated supplementary questionnaire.ResultsDuring 3,984,203 person-years of follow-up, we documented 15,156 incident T2D cases. After adjustment for age, body mass index (BMI) and other lifestyle and dietary risk factors, total dairy consumption was not associated with T2D risk and the pooled hazard ratio (HR) (95% confidence interval (CI)) of T2D for one serving/day increase in total dairy was 0.99 (0.98, 1.01). Among different types of dairy products, neither low-fat nor high-fat dairy intake was appreciably associated with risk of T2D. However, yogurt intake was consistently and inversely associated with T2D risk across the three cohorts with the pooled HR of 0.83 (0.75, 0.92) for one serving/day increment (P for trend <0.001). We conducted a meta-analysis of 14 prospective cohorts with 459,790 participants and 35,863 incident T2D cases; the pooled relative risks (RRs) (95% CIs) were 0.98 (0.96, 1.01) and 0.82 (0.70, 0.96) for one serving total dairy/day and one serving yogurt/day, respectively.ConclusionsHigher intake of yogurt is associated with a reduced risk of T2D, whereas other dairy foods and consumption of total dairy are not appreciably associated with incidence of T2D.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12916-014-0215-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The relation between consumption of different types of dairy and risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) remains uncertain
We documented a total of 15,156 cases of incident diabetes mellitus (DM), including 3,364 cases during a maximum of 24 years of follow-up in the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study (HPFS), 7,841 cases during a maximum of 30 years in the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), and NHS I (1980)
When we examined the association with dairy products categorized by their fat contents, there were no significant associations between either low-fat or high-fat dairy intake and risk of T2D (Table 3)
Summary
The relation between consumption of different types of dairy and risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) remains uncertain. Primary prevention of T2D has become a public health imperative Because of their high content of calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, whey protein and specific fatty acids, dairy products have been suggested to lower risk of T2D [3]. Total dairy product intake was associated with marginally significantly lower risk of T2D in a recent meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies [8]. In a previous study [10], yogurt consumption was associated with the least weight gain among all the food types in our cohorts To address these questions, we aimed to update our previous analyses of total dairy and T2D risk with longer duration of follow-up in the three large cohorts and assess subtypes of dairy consumption in detail. We conducted an updated meta-analysis of our results from these three cohorts and previous literature
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