The health consequences of high blood pressure are well known. World Health Organization (WHO) estimates suggest there are 1 billion people worldwide who have hypertension, contributing to 7.1 million deaths each year. In fact, the WHO reports that “suboptimal blood pressure is the number one attributable risk factor for death throughout the world”. Preventing or reducing blood pressure in the general population can have an enormous impact on the consequent morbidity and mortality.

Ten years ago, the first DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) study was published, demonstrating that a carefully controlled and specific dietary pattern could significantly lower blood pressure in people with prehypertension. The diet was designed to provide 1100 mg calcium, 3900 mg potassium and 450 mg magnesium, minerals beneficial for blood pressure. Importantly, including dairy products such as lowfat milk and yogurt in a person’s diet makes it easier to achieve these nutrient levels. For that reason, they are recommended as part of the DASH diet, which is aimed at people at risk for hypertension.

Despite recommendations to include dairy products as part of a DASH diet to protect against high blood pressure, there is insufficient evidence to make specific health claims about dairy. Some uncertainty exists from results of calcium supplement studies that did not show a blood pressure benefit. Understanding the mechanism of dairy’s effect and isolating the specific benefit of dairy from a nutrient-rich, healthy diet is the challenge to health claims.

Global Dairy Platform is gathering information from published and ongoing studies that include dairy product consumption and measurement of blood pressure (e.g., Lipgene, other DASH studies). Then GDP will develop a research strategy to maximize dairy’s role in preventing or reducing hypertension.

Some possible ideas include:

• Prepare a thorough evaluation of published studies in the form of a review article suitable for publishing
• Conduct a meta-analysis of existing studies
• Undertake animal studies using different diets with and without dairy
• Organise mechanistic studies using animal models
• Run human clinical trials, possibly involving multi-center sites
• Evaluate fermented versus non-fermented dairy products or peptides