Background and Objective

  • Tripeptide, calcium, and other functional nutrients in milk were believed to have anithypertensive effect.

  • Stroke mortality was the No.4 leading cause of death in 2014 Japan's ranking of death rate.

  • Diary food pattern and calcium intake were reported to be negatively associated with stroke mortality in the JACC study.

  • Drinking milk reduced the risk of total mortality in the JACC study. Conflict results from other populations have drawn great attention on this issue.

  • We aimed to compare the risk of stroke mortality between milk drinkers and non-drinkers in our cohort.

Method (1): Subjects

  • Baseline: between 1988-1990;
    n = 110,585
    (46,395 men and 64190 women).
  • Subjects with history of cancer, stroke, cardiovascular diseases, or those with missing information of the milk drinking habit were excluded from the analysis.
    (n = 15,605)

Method (2): Propensity Score Matching and Survival Analysis

  • Propensity Score Matching (PSM): Nearest neighbor matching without replacement
Age, body mass index, smoking, drinking, exercise, sleep duration, 
green-leafy vegetable intake, physical health checkup participation, 
college or higher education, history of hypertension, diabetes, 
liver dieseases were included as the covariates

Packages of "Matching" and "tableone" were used
  • Survival analysis: Cox-proportional Hazard Models

Absolute Standardized Differences in Men

Absolute Standardized Differences in Women

picture of Standardized mean difference

Result: Hazard Ratios (95% CIs) of the Milk Drinkers against Non-drinkers

Discussion & Conclusions

  • We found reduced risk of death from total stroke and cerebral infarction in milk drinker only in men.

  • Although the the baseline differences between milk drinkers and non-drinkers were balanced, information on milk intake and other potential confounders were collected only at baseline.

  • The change of lifestyles during the follow-up may also lead to residual confounding.

  • Drinking milk more than once a month was associated with lower risk of mortality from total stroke and cerebral infarction among Japanese men.