Researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston Salem, NC conducted a study and found evidence suggesting that calcium supplements may decrease mortality in female diabetes mellitus type 2 patients.  

The study was intended to examine the association between dietary or supplemental calcium intake and risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes mellitus as these people are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease and fractures.   Calcium supplements are often used to prevent declines in bone mineral density and fracture and some studies found users of calcium supplements had increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis of data from 720 individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus who participated in the family based Diabetes Heart Study and found no association between calcium intake and any measure of sub-clinical cardiovascular disease such as calcified plague in the coronary artery, carotid artery and abdominal aorta.  No association was observed between mortality in men and women with type 2 diabetes mellitus and calcium intake.

In women with type 2 diabetes mellitus, calcium supplement use was found associated with 38% reduced risk of all cause mortality.  (David Liu, PHD)

Laura M Raffield, Subhashish Agarwal, Amanda J Cox, Fang-Chi Hsu, J Jeffrey Carr, Barry I Freedman, Jianzhao Xu, Donald W Bowden, and Mara Z Vitolins, Cross-sectional analysis of calcium intake for associations with vascular calcification and mortality in individuals with type 2 diabetes from the Diabetes Heart Study, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, First published online August 6, 2014