High salt intake causes 1.6 million deaths worldwide: Study

Consuming too much salt leads to over 1.6 million heart disease-related deaths around the world each year, a new analyses involving 187 countries has warned.
More than 1.6 million cardiovascular-related deaths per year can be attributed to sodium consumption above the World Health Organisation's recommendation of 2.0g (2,000mg) per day, researchers have found.
"High sodium intake is known to increase blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases including heart disease and stroke," said first and corresponding author Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
"However, the effects of excess sodium intake on cardiovascular diseases globally by age, sex, and nation had not been well established," said Mozaffarian, who led the research while at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The researchers collected and analysed existing data from 205 surveys of sodium intake in countries representing nearly three-quarters of the world's adult population, in combination with other global nutrition data, to calculate sodium intakes worldwide by country, age, and sex.
Effects of sodium on blood pressure and of blood pressure on cardiovascular diseases were determined separately in new pooled meta-analyses, including differences by age and race.

These findings were combined with current rates of cardiovascular diseases around the world to estimate the numbers of cardiovascular deaths attributable to sodium consumption above 2.0g per day.
The researchers found the average level of global sodium consumption in 2010 to be 3.95g per day, nearly double the 2.0g recommended by the WHO.

All regions of the world were above recommended levels, with regional averages ranging from 2.18g per day in sub-Saharan Africa to 5.51g per day in Central Asia.
The researchers found that reduced sodium intake lowered blood pressure in all adults, with the largest effects identified among older individuals, blacks, and those with pre-existing high blood pressure.
"These 1.65 million deaths represent nearly one in 10 of all deaths from cardiovascular causes worldwide. No world region and few countries were spared," added Mozaffarian.
"We found that four out of five global deaths attributable to higher than recommended sodium intakes occurred in middle- and low-income countries," added John Powles, last author and honorary senior visiting fellow in the department of public health and primary care at the University of Cambridge.

The finding was published in The New England Journal of Medicine.