Association between Dietary Protein Intake and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Chinese Rural Elderly Population: A Matched Case-Control Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between dietary protein intake and the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) among a Chinese rural elderly population. We used the demographic and dietary information of adults over age 65 in the Henan Rural Cohort Study to identify and pair 950 T2DM patients with healthy controls in a 1: 1 matched case-control study. Dietary data was collected through a Food Frequency Questionnaire. A multivariate logistic regression model was applied to calculate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) of T2DM risk according to protein intake. After adjustment for confounding factors, higher intake of total protein was negatively associated with T2DM risk in the total population (extreme-tertile OR50.75, 95% CI: 0.58–0.93) and women (extreme-tertile OR50.84, 95% CI: 0.47–0.93). Multivariate-adjusted ORs for the risk of T2DM in the highest compared with lowest tertile of plant protein intake in the total population and in women were 0.86 (95% CI: 0.60–0.84) and 0.58 (95% CI: 0.36–0.95), respectively. Our results suggest that the protein intake, especially plant protein, has a sig-nificant association with the risk of T2DM in rural elderly populations, and the sources of protein may be also important in future guidelines.