The association between dairy food intake and the incidence of diabetes in Australia: the Australian Diabetes Obesity and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab)

Abstract

Objective: Several studies have suggested that dairy food may reduce the risk of obesity and metabolic abnormalities but few have been able to conclusively demonstrate that it reduces the risk of diabetes. The aim of the present analysis was to investigate if dairy food intake independently reduces the risk of diabetes. Design: The Australian Diabetes Obesity and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab) is a national, population-based, prospective survey conducted over 5 years. Baseline measurements included a 121-item FFQ, anthropometrics and an oral glucose tolerance test. Setting: Forty-two randomly selected clusters across Australia. Subjects: Adults aged $25 years who participated in the baseline survey and returned to follow-up 5 years later. Results: A total of 5582 participants with complete data were eligible for analysis, 209 of whom had incident diabetes. Compared with men in the first tertile of dairy food intake, men in the third tertile had a significantly reduced risk of developing diabetes after adjustment for age, sex, total energy intake, family history of diabetes, education, physical activity, smoking status, fasting serum TAG and HDL cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, waist circumference and hip circumference (OR 5 0?53, 95 % CI 0?29, 0?96; P 5 0?033). A similar non-significant association was observed in women. Conclusions: Dietary patterns that incorporate high intakes of dairy food may reduce the risk of diabetes among men. Further investigation into the relationship between dairy food intake and diabetes needs to be undertaken to fully understand the potential mechanism of this observation.

Dairy Consumption, Type 2 Diabetes, and Changes in Cardiometabolic Traits: A Prospective Cohort Study of Middle-Aged and Older Chinese in Beijing and Shanghai

“…These associations among Chinese populations seemed stronger than those from a previous meta-analysis, which showed that the risk of type 2 diabetes was 14% lower in the highest quintile of total dairy consumption compared with the lowest quintile (5,35). Several recent studies, on the other hand, did not find significant associations between dairy product consumption and diabetes (8)(9)(10)(11)(12). For example, Sluijs et al (10) showed that the RR (95% CI) for type 2 diabetes comparing extreme quintiles of total dairy consumption was 0.97 (0.82-1.15, P = 0.69) by pooling case-cohort samples from eight countries in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study (10,694 participants with incident type 2 diabetes and 13,780 in the subcohort).…”

“…However, only some prospective studies have observed inverse associations between dairy consumption and risk of diabetes (5-7), whereas others reported null findings (5,(8)(9)(10)(11)(12). In this regard, prospectively investigating associations between dairy consumption and cardiometabolic traits related to diabetes may shed light onto the relationship between dairy consumption and risks of diabetes.…”

Consumption of dairy foods and diabetes incidence: a dose-response meta-analysis of observational studies

“…When studies reported conversion factors, these factors were applied (14,18,19,28). For several studies (13,15,(19)(20)(21)(22)24) additional data were provided by the authors or coworkers. There were overlapping data for 2 studies, namely, the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-InterAct (22) and EPIC-Norfolk (12).…”

“…The sample size of the cohorts ranged from 640 to 85,884, and the duration of follow-up ranged from 2.6 to 30 y. Nine studies were conducted in the United States (4,14,17,19,21,25,26), 8 in Europe (10-13, 20, 22-24), 3 in Asia (16,27,28), and 2 in Australia (15,18). The dairy foods studied and definitions of dairy categories differed across studies, as described in Supplemental Table 1.…”

“…Low-fat milk (7 studies) (4,10,11,15,17) showed no association with T2D risk (RR: 1.01; 95% CI: 0.97, 1.05; P = 0.55) (Supplemental Figure 19). There was significant heterogeneity (I 2 = 72%, P = 0.002).…”