Title
Effect of salt substitution on community-wide blood pressure and hypertension incidence
Date Issued
01 March 2020
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Publisher(s)
Nature Research
Abstract
Replacement of regular salt with potassium-enriched substitutes reduces blood pressure in controlled situations, mainly among people with hypertension. We report on a population-wide implementation of this strategy in a stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial (NCT01960972). The regular salt in enrolled households was retrieved and replaced, free of charge, with a combination of 75% NaCl and 25% KCl. A total of 2,376 participants were enrolled in 6 villages in Tumbes, Peru. The fully adjusted intention-to-treat analysis showed an average reduction of 1.29 mm Hg (95% confidence interval (95% CI) (−2.17, −0.41)) in systolic and 0.76 mm Hg (95% CI (−1.39, −0.13)) in diastolic blood pressure. Among participants without hypertension at baseline, in the time- and cluster-adjusted model, the use of the salt substitute was associated with a 51% (95% CI (29%, 66%)) reduced risk of developing hypertension compared with the control group. In 24-h urine samples, there was no evidence of differences in sodium levels (mean difference 0.01; 95% CI (0.25, −0.23)), but potassium levels were higher at the end of the study than at baseline (mean difference 0.63; 95% CI (0.78, 0.47)). Our results support a case for implementing a pragmatic, population-wide, salt-substitution strategy for reducing blood pressure and hypertension incidence.
Start page
374
End page
378
Volume
26
Issue
3
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Nutrición, Dietética Sistema cardiaco, Sistema cardiovascular
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85079714460
PubMed ID
Source
Nature Medicine
ISSN of the container
10788956
Sponsor(s)
This study was supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (Project 5 U01 HL114180-01), under the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases hypertension program. A.B.-O. was supported by a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship in Public Health and Tropical Medicine (grant no. 103994/Z/14/Z). V.G.S.y.R. was funded by the Dirección de Gestión de la Investigación at the Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú (grant no. DGI-2017-496).
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus