Low-fat dairy foods may lower women’s diabetes risk

BY Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A diet that includes lots of
low-fat dairy products may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes in
women, new research suggests.

Although a series of recent studies suggests that a high
level of dairy foods in the diet may lower the risk of being
overweight or developing insulin resistance syndrome, studies
that have examined the link between these factors and diabetes
risk are sparse, Dr. Simin Liu, from the University of
California Los Angeles School of Public Health and colleagues
note.

They therefore looked for the relationship between type 2
diabetes and dietary levels of dairy foods and calcium in
37,183 women in the Women’s Health Study. A total of 1,603
women developed diabetes during an average follow-up of 10
years.

“The most important finding is that women who consumed more
low-fat dairy foods tended to experience a lower risk of type 2
diabetes in a period of 10 years,” Liu told Reuters Health.

After adjusting for potentially confounding factors such as
weight, physical activity, and family history of diabetes,
women with the highest intake of dairy foods were 21 percent
less likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those with the
lowest intake, Liu’s team reports in the journal Diabetes Care.

“Each serving-per-day increase in dairy intake was
associated with a 4-percent lower risk.”

The benefit of a high intake of low-fat dairy foods on type
2 diabetes risk was independent of dietary calcium and vitamin
D. This is the first study, the authors add, to tease out the
effects of dairy food intake from those of dietary calcium and
vitamin D.

“The message,” said Liu, “is that low-fat dairy foods can
be incorporated into a healthy diet that may lower a woman’s
risk of diabetes.”

The apparent anti-diabetes effect of a low-fat dairy-packed
diet seen in the current study of women mirrors that shown
previously in men. (see Reuters Health report May 9, 2005:
Low-fat dairy foods may lower diabetes risk in men).

However, Liu and colleagues caution that further studies
are needed to confirm their observations “before public health
measures to increase dairy consumption can be recommended for
prevention of type 2 diabetes.”

SOURCE: Diabetes Care, July 2006.