The association of milk consumption with the occurrence of symptomatic knee osteoarthritis

Kaçar C, Gilgil E, Tuncer T, Bütün B, Urhan S, Sünbüloglu G, Yildirim C, Arikan V, Dündar U, Oksüz MC, Tekeoglu I · Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology

Milk tracked with less symptomatic knee OA in a dose-response that survived adjustment: against seldom drinking it, the odds ratio was 0.43 (95% CI 0.22-0.84) for sometimes and 0.29 (0.13-0.65) for daily, with advanced age and female sex the only other determinants the multivariate model retained. Tea did not survive it — tea drinkers had less symptomatic knee OA in the unadjusted frequency comparison (p < 0.05) and tea is absent from the adjusted model. No other dietary factor examined — meat, poultry, fish, cereals, vegetables, coffee — showed any association, though coffee drinking was commoner in men (p = 0.008).

Population

655 adults aged 50 and over in Antalya, Turkey — 349 men and 306 women, mean age 59.7, range 50 to 94 — interviewed face to face; knee OA diagnosed by ACR criteria in 97 (14.8%), clinically and radiologically in 70 of them and clinically in 27

Intervention

Daily milk consumption

Comparator

Seldom or intermittent consumption

Limitations

Cross-sectional interview data, so this is prevalent rather than incident disease and people whose knees hurt may already have changed what they eat. Body mass index was not measured at all, which the authors state and raise themselves against the tea finding: they note they cannot tell whether tea drinkers simply weigh less. The type of tea was not recorded either.