Study reveals how reducing sodium intake can help heart failure patients

Over the weekend, The Lancet and The 71st Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology presented simultaneously the largest study on reducing sodium intake.

While reducing salt intake did not reduce emergency department visits, hospitalizations or deaths in heart failure patients, the researchers did find improvements in symptoms such as swelling, fatigue and cough, as well as an improvement in overall quality of life

"We can no longer recommend to all patients that restricting sodium intake will lower your chances of dying or being hospitalized, but I can easily say that it improves people's overall quality of life

The researchers followed 806 patients at 26 medical centers in Canada, the United States, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and New Zealand

In the trial, patients in the nutritional counseling department were given menu recommendations designed by a dietitian, advising them to use foods from their region, and encouraged to cook their meals at home without adding salt and avoiding high-salt ingredients

The target sodium intake is 1,500 milligrams per day, or the equivalent of two-thirds of a teaspoon of salt, the upper limit that Health Canada recommends for most Canadians, whether or not they have heart failure

Before the study, patients ate an average of 2,217 mg per day, or less than a teaspoon

The researchers compared any-cause mortality, cardiovascular hospitalizations, and cardiovascular emergency department visits in the two study groups, but found no statistically significant differences

They did find consistent improvements in the low sodium group using three different quality-of-life assessment tools, as well as the New York Heart Association Heart Failure Classification (a measure of the severity of heart failure)

Ezekowitz said he will continue to advise heart failure patients to reduce their salt intake, but now he will be more aware of the expected benefits

The team will do further research to isolate a marker from the blood of those patients who benefit most from a low-sodium diet, so that more targeted individual dietary prescriptions can be made in the future

Journal Reference :

1. Justin A Ezekowitz, Eloisa Colin-Ramirez, Heather Ross, Jorge Escobedo, Peter Macdonald, Richard Troughton, Clara Saldarriaga, Wendimagegn Alemayehu, Finlay A McAlister, JoAnne Arcand, John Atherton, Robert Doughty, Milan Gupta, Jonathan Howlett, Shahin Jaffer, Andrea Lavoie, Mayanna Lund, Thomas Marwick, Robert McKelvie, Gordon Moe, A Shekhar Pandey, Liane Porepa, Miroslaw Rajda, Haunnah Rheault, Jitendra Singh, Mustafa Toma, Sean Virani, Shelley Zieroth, Justin Ezekowitz, Eloisa Colin-Ramirez, Heather Ross, Jorge Escobedo, Peter Macdonald, Richard Troughton, Clara Saldarriaga, Wendimagegn Alemayehu, Finlay McAlister, JoAnne Arcand, John Atherton, Robert Doughty, Milan Gupta, Jonathan Howlett, Shahin Jaffer, Andrea Lavoie, Mayanna Lund, Thomas Marwick, Robert McKelvie, Gordon Moe , A.