Vitamin D-fortified dairy products are increasingly recommended and used for fracture prevention. To help decision makers to efficiently allocate scare resources, it is important to assess the public health and economic impact of any health intervention. In recent years, several studies have been conducted to estimate the public health and/or economic impact of vitamin D-fortified dairy products but no overview is currently available. This article aims therefore to summarize evidence and review articles that estimated the public health and/or economic impact of vitamin D-fortified dairy products for fracture prevention. Through a search using PubMed, we identified 7 articles that assessed the public health and/or economic impact of vitamin D-fortified dairy products (or of calcium and vitamin D supplementation) for fracture prevention. Different strategies were used by the authors to model the economic/public health impact of dairy products making direct comparison between studies difficult. The four studies assessing the public health impact of dairy products revealed a substantial benefits in terms of fracture prevented, life years, DALY and/or QALY gained. Studies assessing the cost-effectiveness revealed that the use dairy products is generally cost-effective in the general population aged above 70 years, and from the age of 60 years in populations at high risk of fractures. In conclusion, this systematic review suggests that the use of dairy products could substantially reduce the burden of osteoporotic fractures and seem to be an economically beneficial strategy.
Key words
Cost-effectiveness, dairy products, fractures, nutrition, osteoporosis, public health.
