This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Higher sodium-potassium level linked to CVD risk
Yang Q. Arch Intern Med. 2011;171:1183-1191.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
A higher ratio of sodium-potassium intake was linked to an increased risk for all-cause mortality of nearly 50%, according to study results.
Previous findings have indicated that higher sodium and lower potassium intakes may increase CVD risk, researchers from several sites in the US suggested. However, the impact of that ratio on mortality has not been explored.
Data for 12,267 adults from the 1988-2006 Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Linked Mortality File were analyzed for associations between sodium-potassium intake ratios and all-cause, cardiovascular and IHD mortality. There were 2,270 deaths during a mean of 14.8 years of follow-up. There were 825 CVD deaths and 443 deaths attributed to IHD.
Multivariate analysis results indicated that higher sodium intake was linked to increased all-cause mortality (HR=1.20; 95% CI, 1.03-1.41 per 1000 mg/d) and higher potassium intake was linked to lower mortality risk (HR=0.80; 95% CI, 0.67-0.94 per 1000 mg/d).
The sodium-potassium ratios were broken down into quartiles. The adjusted HRs for the highest quartile compared with the lowest were 1.46 (95% CI, 1.27-1.67) for all-cause mortality, 1.46 (95% CI, 1.11-1.92) for CVD mortality and 2.15 (95% CI, 1.48-3.12) for IHD mortality, according to the results.
There were no significant differences in these findings with regard to demographic data, BMI, hypertension status or physical activity levels of the study population.
“Our findings suggest that a higher sodium-potassium ratio is associated with significantly increased risk of CVD and all-cause mortality, and higher sodium intake is associated with increased total mortality in the general US population,” the researchers wrote.
 |
Follow CardiologyToday.com on Twitter. |