High salt levels in soluble drugs may raise heart risk

Conclusion This large case control study suggested that people who had experienced disease of the heart and blood vessels were more likely to have taken sodium-containing medicines than people without cardiovascular disease. Put in other words this can be interpreted that people who took sodium-containing medicines were at a higher risk of experiencing cardiovascular disease than people who took the same medications in formulations free of sodium. The increased risk appeared to be driven mostly by an increased risk of hypertension and to a lesser extent, non-fatal stroke. The study has some strengths including its large sample size, reasonable follow up time (over seven years on average), and direct measure of cardiovascular illness (recorded in a medical database). However, it does contain significant limitations that weaken the strength of its conclusions. Firstly the research design means that it cannot prove cause and effect. Furthermore, there may be many factors, some measured (confounders, adjusted for in the analyses), and some not (bias), that could influence the results found that have nothing to do with sodium containing medicines. Secondly, the researchers did not measure dietary intake of sodium in the form of regular salt. It may be that the cases suffering cardiovascular disease had higher dietary salt intake than the disease-free controls. And this could explain why they had hypertension and more disease, irrespective of the influence of sodium containing m...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Medication Medical practice Source Type: news