It is well known that adding salt regularly to your food raises the risk of hypertension and the resultant risks of heart attacks and strokes. But now, researchers in New Orleans, USA, have found that it also significantly increases the danger of triggering Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). The study, which involved 465,288 participants, showed that a higher self-reported frequency of adding salt to foods, a common eating behaviour shaped by a person’s long-term preference for salty taste in foods and habitual salt intake, was significantly associated with an increased risk of CKD. In the paper, published in JAMA Network, the team found that people who added salt to their foods were also more likely than those who did not add salt to their foods to be current smokers and have diabetes or CKD at baseline.
Rui Tang, M.P.H., from Tulane University in New Orleans, and colleagues examined the association of self-reported frequency of adding salt to food with incident CKD risk in a general population of adults aged 37 to 73 years from the U.K. Biobank who were free of CKD at baseline.
The researchers found that 22,031 incident events of CKD were documented during a median follow-up of 11.8 years within a cohort of 465,288 individuals. After adjustment for covariates, higher self-reported frequency of adding salt to foods was significantly associated with a higher CKD risk.
Those who reported sometimes, usually, and always adding salt to food had a higher risk for CKD compared to those who reported never or rarely adding salt to foods (adjusted hazard ratios [95 percent confidence intervals], 1.04 [1.00 to 1.07], 1.07 [1.02 to 1.11], and 1.11 [1.05 to 1.18], respectively). The associations were significantly modified by estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), body mass index (BMI), and physical activity, with more pronounced associations seen for those with a higher eGFR, lower BMI, and lower level of physical activity.
"The findings suggest that reducing the frequency of adding salt to foods at the table might be a valuable strategy to lower CKD risk in the general population," Rui Tang, added.
