Dairy Products Consumption and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies

Context: The relationship between dairy products consumption and the incidence of diabetes is investigated in various studies leading to contradictory results; therefore, the current meta-analytical study aimed at shedding light on the matter and estimating the potentiality of diabetes resulting from consuming dairy products. Evidence Acquisition: The study used some reliable electronic databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, and PubMed revised to March 2016. All original articles from prospective cohort and case-cohort studies examining the relationship between dairy products consumption and the risk of diabetes were considered without any restrictions on age, gender, language, race, and publication year. To assess the quality of the study, the STROBE (strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology) checklist was employed. The indices of relative risk and rate ratio were reported using the random effect model. Results: Out of 1391 articles, 14 studies (covering 458,082 subjects) were included in the current meta-analysis. The findings showed that consuming dairy products prevents diabetes: total dairy decreases the risk of diabetes by 8% to 12% (relative risk = 0.88 (95% CI: 0.80, 0.96), rate ratio = 0.92 (95% CI: 0.88, 0.97)). The decrease adds up from 11% to 19% in the case of consuming low-fat dairy (relative risk= 0.81 (95% CI: 0.68, 0.96); rate ratio= 0.89 (95% CI: 0.85, 0.93)). In spite of the fact that high-fat dairy diminishes the risk of diabetes, the relationship is not statistically significant (relative risk = 0.98 (95% CI: 0.78, 1.24); rate ratio = 1.01 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.06)). Conclusions: The current study indicated that the consumption of total dairy and low-fat dairy had a preventive impact on the incidence of diabetes; therefore, it seems that drawing up some plans in this regard decreases the risk of the disease.