Abstract 10936: Dietary Salt Intake and Prediction of Cardiovascular Events

Abstract

The association of dietary salt and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and the benefit of dietary salt restriction in the prevention of CVD has been under debate recently. We studied the salt consumption (mg sodium/1000 kcal) as a risk factor for fatal and nonfatal CVD in our population-based cohort of 1045 subjects collected in years 1991-1993 (mean age 51.1 years, SD 5.94) with comprehensive baseline characteristics and approximately 19 years follow up. At the baseline, 716 subjects filled in a 1-week food follow-up diary, which was used for the daily sodium intake calculation. At the baseline, sodium consumption correlated positively with age (r= 0.12, p=0.002) and other traditional risk factors of cardiovascular disease (smoking r=0.14, p=0.000; systolic blood pressure r=0.11, p=0.005; BMI r=0.22, p=0.000; waist r=0.27, p=0.000; LDL cholesterol r=0.08, p=0.03; Spearmann correlations). Those who had cardiovascular event in the follow up consumed more sodium at the baseline (2010.4 mg/1000 kcal, SD=435.2, n=101) than those without events (1849.9 mg/1000 kcal, SD 361.2, n=589), p=0.000. When quartiles of sodium consumption were considered, the cardiovascular events were more prevalent in the highest quartile (23 %) than in the lower quartiles (1^st10.7 %, 2^nd 11.4 %, 3^rd 13.9 %) (Chi square p=0.005). The cumulative hazard of CVD in the quartiles of sodium intake in males is shown in the figure. In the Cox regression analysis, sodium consumption as a continuous variable was an independent predictor of cardiovascular event ( P=0.021) when age, sex, smoking, systolic blood pressure, LDL cholesterol and waist were added as covariates. In conclusion, dietary salt intake is a significant independent predictor of cardiovascular events.