Italian postmenopausal women who have a low calcium intake show a higher risk of developing both osteoporosis and hypertension (a chronic medical condition in which arterial blood pressure is elevated) than those who consume higher levels of calcium according to research presented at EULAR 2010, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism in Rome, Italy.
In this Italian study of 825 postmenopausal women with hypertension, a significantly increased proportion of women (35.4%) who consumed a lower amount of calcium through intake from dairy sources, had a concurrent diagnosis of both hypertension and osteoporosis, compared with women who consumed a higher amount of calcium (19.3% p