Myocardial infarction in patients treated with Sippy and other high-milk diets: an autopsy study of fifteen hospitals in the U.S.A. and Great Britain.

IT HAS beeni reported that the iucidence of myocardial infarcts is higher among persons with chroiie peptic ulcers thau among others.1' 2 This higher incidence may be due to the type of diet conisumLied by these patients. Milk produc ts are suspect because of their eonuiion use by ulcer patienits. Butter fat is particularly suspect because it has ani effect on blood coagulation3 and Clot lysis,4 because it is a major conlstituenlt of diets that produce corollary thrombosis and meyocardial infarets iu experimental aniimals,5 and because of its effect on blood cholesterol levels in mani under certain conditionis.6 It occurred to us that we might obtain important inforination by dividing patients with chronic peptic ulcer who had come to autopsy into 2 groups: (1) those whose treatment ineluded the use of milk or cream (such as the Sippy diet), anid (2) those whose histories did not inidicate that their therapy included the use of milk or cream. If the patients who consumed milk or creamn as part of their therapy had a higher incidenice of myocardial in-farcts than those who had not been given this type of therapy, it would at least suggest that the higher incidenee of infarets was related to the therapy. Such an associationi would not constitute absolute proof of the relationi of consumptioni of milk an-d cream to the higher incidence of myoeardial infarets in patients with peptic ulcer, sinlce some unknown factor of selection may enter into the choice of pa-