{"id":8120,"date":"2011-05-03T16:06:16","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T20:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?p=8120"},"modified":"2011-07-19T17:44:26","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T21:44:26","slug":"study-challenges-efforts-to-lower-salt-in-the-general-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2011\/05\/03\/study-challenges-efforts-to-lower-salt-in-the-general-population\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Challenges Efforts to Lower Salt in the General Population"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new study challenges the conventional wisdom that lowering salt intake in the general population will result in fewer cardiovascular  events. In <a href=\"http:\/\/jama.ama-assn.org\/content\/305\/17\/1777.short\">a paper in <em>JAMA<\/em><\/a>, Katarzyna Stolarz-Skrzypek and colleagues  report the results of the study, in which they followed 3,681 European  people without cardiovascular disease after measuring their blood  pressure and urinary sodium excretion.<\/p>\n<p>After adjusting for other  variables, the researchers found that systolic (but not diastolic) blood pressure  was independently correlated with sodium excretion, and that systolic blood  pressure changed in accord with changes in sodium excretion. However,  higher sodium excretion was not associated with more cardiovascular  complications. In fact, the investigators reported &#8220;a weak but  consistent inverse association between cardiovascular mortality and the  24-hour urinary sodium excretion at baseline.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The authors note  that most salt studies have measured salt intake, and no previous study  has examined the &#8220;longitudinal association between changes in blood  pressure on a continuous scale in relation to changes in 24-hour urinary  sodium excretion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The authors conclude that their findings  &#8220;refute the estimates of computer models of lives saved and health care  costs reduced with lower salt intake.\u00a0 They do also not support the  current recommendations of a generalized and indiscriminate reduction of  salt intake at the population level. However, they do not negate the  blood pressure\u2212lowering effects of a dietary salt reduction in  hypertensive patients.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study challenges the conventional wisdom that lowering salt intake in the general population will result in fewer cardiovascular events. In a paper in JAMA, Katarzyna Stolarz-Skrzypek and colleagues report the results of the study, in which they followed 3,681 European people without cardiovascular disease after measuring their blood pressure and urinary sodium excretion. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[454,828,829],"class_list":["post-8120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prevention","tag-hypertension","tag-salt","tag-sodium-excretion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}