High Salt Intake Can Predict Future Hypertension

Consuming high levels of dietary salt and gradually increasing the levels consumed over time are both associated with an increased risk of hypertension, according to a recent study.

“Although there is a close relationship between dietary sodium and hypertension, the concept that persons with relatively high dietary sodium are at increased risk of developing hypertension compared with those with relatively low dietary sodium has not been studied intensively in a cohort,” according to researchers.
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In order to further explore this relationship, researchers estimated the sodium intake of 4523 individuals without hypertension using 24-hour urinary sodium excretion for a median of 1143 days of follow-up.

Overall, hypertension developed in 1027 participants (22.7%). The risk of developing hypertension was higher in participants with higher dietary salt intake, and after multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analysis, researchers found that the yearly change in dietary salt intake during follow-up also correlated with the risk of developing hypertension.

“The fact that a mild increase in sodium intake within the range observed in usual daily life but not a drastic sodium load, as observed in interventional studies, increases the chance of developing hypertension may become a driving force for the reduction of dietary sodium consumption in the general population.”

“Furthermore, an effort not to increase dietary sodium as well as an effort to reduce dietary sodium intake may be effective for the primary prevention of hypertension or reduction of blood pressure in the population at large,” they concluded.

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Takase, H, Sugiura T, Kimura G, et al. Dietary sodium consumption predicts future blood pressure and incident hypertension in the japanese normotensive general population. J Am Heart Assoc.2015; 4: e001959