You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Therapeutics
Systematic review and meta-analysis
Dietary salt reduction; further lowering of target lowers blood pressure but may increase risk
  1. Franz H Messerli1,
  2. Sripal Bangalore2
  1. 1 St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, New York , New York , USA;
  2. 2 Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York , New York , USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Franz H Messerli, St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, 1000 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10019, USA; messerli.f{at}gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/eb-2013-101428

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Commentary on: He FJ, Li J, Macgregor GA. Effect of longer-term modest salt reduction on blood pressure. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013;(4):CD004937.

    Context

    Numerous studies have shown that a high dietary salt intake increases blood pressure (BP) and the risk of cardiovascular events.1 ,2 Conversely, a moderate and even low-level salt intake lowers BP in a dose-dependent way.

    Methods

    He and colleagues have performed a thorough and comprehensive meta-analysis of 34 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the impact of modest reduction in salt intake with a trial duration of at least 4 weeks.

    Findings

    The present study corroborates the findings showing that a ‘modest’ reduction in salt intake from 9.4 to 4.4 g/day caused a significant fall in BP in hypertensive as well as normotensive individuals (systolic change −4.18 mm Hg (95% CI −5.18 to −3.18; p<0.0001)). This fall in BP was associated with a ‘small physiological increase in plasma renin, aldosterone and norepinephrine’. The authors stated that the current recommendations to reduce salt intake to 5–6 g/day …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None.