Dairy Intake and Coronary Heart Disease or Stroke – a population-based cohort study in the Netherlands

AIM: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between total dairy intake and dairy subtypes (high-fat dairy, low-fat dairy, milk and milk products, cheese and fermented dairy) with incident coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke. METHODS: EPIC-NL is a prospective cohort study among 33,625 Dutch men and women. At baseline (1993-1997), dairy intake was measured with a validated food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). The incidence of both fatal and non-fatal CHD and stroke was obtained by linkage to the national registers. RESULTS: During 13years follow-up, 1648 cases of CHD and 531 cases of stroke were documented. Total dairy intake was not significantly associated with risk of CHD (hazard ratio per standard deviation (SD) increase=0.99; 95%-CI: 0.94-1.05) or stroke (0.95; 0.85-1.05) adjusted for lifestyle and dietary factors. None of the dairy subtypes was to CHD, while only fermented dairy tended to be associated (p=0.07) with a lower risk of stroke (0.92; 0.83-1.01). Hypertension appeared to modify the association of total and low-fat dairy with CHD (p interactio