Objectives: To quantify the dose-response relation between yogurt consumption and risk of mortality from all causes, CVD and cancer.
Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis.
Setting: We conducted a comprehensive search of PubMed/Medline, ISI Web of Science and Scopus databases through August 2022 for cohort studies reporting the association of yogurt consumption with mortality from all causes, CVD and cancer. Summary relative risks (RR) and 95 % CI were calculated with a random-effects model.
Participants: Seventeen cohort studies (eighteen publications) of 896 871 participants with 75 791 deaths (14 623 from CVD and 20 554 from cancer).
Results: High intake of yogurt compared with low intake was significantly associated with a lower risk of deaths from all causes (pooled RR 0·93; 95 % CI: 0·89, 0·98, I2 = 47·3 %, n 12 studies) and CVD (0·89; 95 % CI: 0·81, 0·98, I2 = 33·2 %, n 11), but not with cancer (0·96; 95 % CI: 0·89, 1·03, I2 = 26·5 %, n 12). Each additional serving of yogurt consumption per d was significantly associated with a reduced risk of all-cause (0·93; 95 % CI: 0·86, 0·99, I2 = 63·3 %, n 11) and CVD mortality (0·86; 95 % CI: 0·77, 0·99, I2 = 36·6 %, n 10). There was evidence of non-linearity between yogurt consumption and risk of all-cause and CVD mortality, and there was no further reduction in risk above 0·5 serving/d.
Conclusion: Summarising earlier cohort studies, we found an inverse association between yogurt consumption and risk of all-cause and CVD mortality; however, there was no significant association between yogurt consumption and risk of cancer mortality.
Keywords: Cancer; Cohort study; Dairy; Death; Meta-analysis; Mortality; Yogurt.