Dietary salt intake and blood pressure.

With an index for dietary salt use designed to provide a semiquantitative estimate of salt intake, we have found that in a sample representative of the 2.1 million adults in Connecticut, the mean BP of those at the 90th percentile or higher of salt intake differs by a quantitatively insignificant amount from the mean BP of those at the tenth percentile or lower of salt intake. When we examined the obese (body mass index, 90th percentile or higher) separately, similar results were obtained. These findings indicate that it is unlikely dietary salt intake has a clinically significant effect on BP in the majority of individuals in a large defined population, but do not exclude the possibility of a clinically significant effect in a small subgroup of salt-sensitive individuals.