Abstract
Background: Recent evidence from prospective cohort studies show a relationship between consumption of dairy foods and
cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This association highlights the importance of dairy foods
consumption in prevention of these diseases and also reduction of associated healthcare costs. The aim of this study was to
estimate avoidable healthcare costs of CVD and T2D through adequate dairy foods consumption in Iran.
Methods: This was a multistage modelling study. We conducted a systematic literature review in PubMed and EMBASE to identify
any association between incidence of CVD and T2DM and dairy foods intake, and also associated relative risks. We obtained
age- and sex-specific dairy foods consumption level and healthcare expenditures from national surveys and studies. Patient level
simulation Markov models were constructed to predict the disease incidence, patient population size and associated healthcare
costs for current and optimal dairy foods consumption at different time horizons (1, 5, 10 and 20 years). All parameters including
costs and transition probabilities were defined as statistical distributions in the models, and all analyses were conducted by
accounting for first and second order uncertainty.
Results: The systematic review results indicated that dairy foods consumption was inversely associated with incidence of T2DM,
coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke. We estimated that the introduction of a diet containing 3 servings of dairy foods per day
may produce a $0.43 saving in annual per capita healthcare costs in Iran in the first year due to saving in cost of CVD and T2DM
treatment. The estimated savings in per capita healthcare costs were $8.42, $39.97 and $190.25 in 5, 10 and 20-years’ time,
respectively. Corresponding total aggregated avoidable costs for the entire Iranian population within the study time horizons were
$33.83, $661.31, $3,138.21 and $14,934.63 million, respectively.
Conclusion: Our analysis demonstrated that increasing dairy foods consumption to recommended levels would be associated with
reductions in healthcare costs. Further randomized trial studies are required to investigate the effect of dairy foods intake on cost
of CVD and T2DM in the population.