Dairy fat and risk of cardiovascular disease in 3 cohorts of US adults
Open accessAbstract
Background Few prospective studies have examined dairy fat in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD).Objective We aimed to evaluate the association between dairy fat and incident CVD in US adults.Design We followed 43,652 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986-2010), 87,907 women in the Nurses' Health Study (1980-2012), and 90,675 women in the Nurses' Health Study II (1991-2011). Dairy fat and other fat intakes were assessed every 4 y with the use of validated food-frequency questionnaires.Results During 5,158,337 person-years of follow-up, we documented 14,815 incident CVD cases including 8974 coronary heart disease cases (nonfatal myocardial infarction or fatal coronary disease) and 5841 stroke cases. In multivariate analyses, compared with an equivalent amount of energy from carbohydrates (excluding fruit and vegetables), dairy fat intake was not significantly related to risk of total CVD (for a 5% increase in energy from dairy fat, the RR was 1.02; 95% CI: 0.98, 1.05), coronary heart disease (RR: 1.03; 95% CI: 0.98, 1.09), or stroke (RR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.93, 1.05) (P > 0.05 for all). In models in which we estimated the effects of exchanging different fat sources, the replacement of 5% of energy intake from dairy fat with equivalent energy intake from polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) or vegetable fat was associated with 24% (RR: 0.76; 95% CI: 0.71, 0.81) and 10% (RR: 0.90; 95% CI: 0.87, 0.93) lower risk of CVD, respectively, whereas the 5% energy intake substitution of other animal fat with dairy fat was associated with 6% increased CVD risk (RR: 1.06; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.09).Conclusions The replacement of animal fats, including dairy fat, with vegetable sources of fats and PUFAs may reduce risk of CVD. Whether the food matrix may modify the effect of dairy fat on health outcomes warrants further investigation.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Higher consumption of fruit, non-starchy vegetables, nuts, legumes, fish, vegetable oils, yoghurt, and wholegrains, along with lower intake of red and processed meats, refined carbohydrates, and salt, is associated with lower incidence of cardiovascular events.
“Consistent evidence from epidemiological studies indicates that higher consumption of fruit, non-starchy vegetables, nuts, legumes, fish, vegetable oils, yoghurt, and wholegrains, along with a lower intake of red and processed meats, foods higher in refined carbohydrates, and salt, is associated with a lower incidence of CV events [131].”
From 2019 ESC/EAS guidelines for the management of dyslipidaemias: lipid modification to reduce cardiovascular risk (2019) · cites this paper as [131]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 47 · Cited by 182
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Trans fatty acids and coronary heart disease risk. Report of the expert panel on trans fatty acids and coronary heart disease. Am J Clin Nutr 1995;62:655S-708S; discussion 518-26.
- Authors
- Chen, M., Li, Y., Sun, Q., Pan, A., Manson, J. E., Rexrode, K. M., Willett, W. C., Rimm, E. B., & Hu, F. B.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Huazhong University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Brigham and Women's Hospital (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hu, Frank B
- ORCID
- Venue
- The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-11
- Volume
- 104
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1209-1217
- ISSN
- 0002-9165 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5081717
- OpenAlex
- W2518412059
- Cited by
- 182
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 5
- FWCI
- 23.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- NIH (R01 HL034594, UM1 CA176726, UM1 CA186107, R01 HL35464, R01 HL088521, R01 CA67262, HL60712, UM1 CA167552)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Nutritional Studies and Diet
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Fatty Acid Research and Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › Cardiovascular Health and Risk Factors
- Keywords
- milk fat, cardiovascular disease, coronary artery disease, stroke, dietary fat intake, polyunsaturated fatty acids, vegetable fats, animal fats, dietary risk factors, Nurses' Health Study, Health Professionals Follow-up Study, Nurses' Health Study II, prospective cohort, myocardial infarction, saturated fat, trans fatty acids, dietary fiber, alcohol consumption, physical activity
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Energy Intake, Cardiovascular Diseases, Dairy Products, Diet, Dietary Fats, Fatty Acids, Unsaturated, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Fruit, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Prospective Studies, Surveys and Questionnaires, Risk Factors, Vegetables, Reproducibility of Results, Nutrition Assessment, Multivariate Analysis, Proportional Hazards Models
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
