TUESDAY, Feb. 28 (HealthDay News) -- High cocoa intake is associated with lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of death from cardiovascular and other causes in elderly men, researchers from the Netherlands report in the Feb. 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Brian Buijsse, M.Sc., from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, and colleagues assessed whether there was an association between cocoa intake, blood pressure and mortality in 470 elderly Dutch men over 15 years of follow-up. The men, who were healthy at baseline, underwent physical examinations and were interviewed about their dietary history in 1985, 1990 and 1995.
Men who were in the top one-third of cocoa consumption had a mean systolic blood pressure 3.7 mm Hg lower and a mean diastolic pressure 2.1 mm Hg lower than men in the bottom one-third of cocoa consumption. Men in the top one-third of cocoa intake also had an adjusted relative risk of 0.50 for cardiovascular mortality and 0.53 for all-cause mortality compared with men in the bottom one-third. Two-thirds of cocoa was consumed as chocolate or chocolate bars.
"In a cohort of elderly men, cocoa intake is inversely associated with blood pressure and 15-year cardiovascular and all-cause mortality," Buijsse and colleagues conclude.
The study was funded by grants from the Netherlands Prevention Foundation, The Hague.
Abstract
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