Yoghurt may lower hypertension risk

By Piriya Mahendra, medwireNews Reporter

The addition of yoghurt to the diet without increasing calorie intake may lower the risk for high blood pressure, say US researchers.

The research was presented at the American Heart Association Research Scientific Sessions in Washington DC, USA, by Huifen Wang (Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts) and team.

All participants were derived from the Framingham Heart Study Offspring Cohort in 1998-2001 (baseline) and 2005-2008. Dietary intake was assessed using a validated food frequency questionnaire and antihypertensive medication use was obtained by physician elicited self-report.

At baseline, 960 (44%) of the 2197 participants included in the study ate one or more servings of yoghurt per month and had a mean systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) of 117 mmHg and 72 mmHg, respectively. All participants were free from hypertension at baseline and had valid measurements available for yoghurt intake and BP.

BP and yoghurt intake increased over the 14-year follow-up period and 913 participants developed incident hypertension.

The authors showed that in logistic regression analysis, adjusting for demographic and lifestyle factors as well as cholesterol-lowering medication use, people for whom more than 2% of their daily total calorie intake came from yoghurt had a 31% lower risk for incident hypertension than those who did not eat yoghurt. The authors say that this intake of yoghurt is equivalent to at least one 6-ounce cup of low-fat yoghurt every 3 days.

Repeated measure analysis revealed that long-term yoghurt eaters also had a 0.19 mmHg lower annualized elevation of SBP than nonyoghurt-eaters. The authors note that excluding antihypertensive medication users at follow-up strengthened the longitudinal association between yoghurt intake and annualized SBP change.

The association between yoghurt intake and hypertension risk remained significant after controlling for body mass index (BMI) and change in BMI. Yoghurt intake was not related to change in DBP over time, the authors say.

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