Salt tied to elevated blood pressure, even with healthy diet, says study

Agencies
March 7, 2018

People who eat lots of fruits, veggies, and whole grains may still have an increased risk of elevated blood pressure if they consume a lot of salt, a new study suggests.

Eating high-sodium foods has long been associated with raised blood pressure readings, but some evidence suggests that body weight and other nutrients in the diet may modify or offset the effects of sodium on blood pressure.

To see how diet might influence the connection between salt and blood pressure, researchers examined data from food surveys completed by 4,680 middle-aged adults, and determined the amount of 80 nutrients in each person’s diet.

With the exception of potassium, none of these nutrients appeared to weaken the connection between eating a high-sodium diet and having higher average blood pressure readings over 24 hours than people who ate the least sodium, researchers report in Hypertension.

“This matters because it indicates that the problem of excess salt intake and its adverse effects on blood pressure cannot be solved by augmenting the diet with other nutrients,” said lead study author Dr. Jeremiah Stamler of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.

“The solution is reduction in salt intake,” Stamler said. “This is difficult since, as a result of commercial food processing, salt is almost everywhere in the food supply.”

Chronic high blood pressure is tied to an increased risk of heart disease, heart attack, stroke and heart failure.

To lower the risk of heart disease, adults should reduce sodium intake to less than 2 grams a day, or the equivalent of about one teaspoon of table salt, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Sodium is found not only in salt, but also in a variety of foods such as bread, milk, eggs, meat and shellfish as well as processed items like soup, pretzels, popcorn, soy sauce and bouillon cubes.

Extra sodium in the bloodstream can pull water into the blood vessels and boost blood pressure by increasing the amount of fluid the heart needs to pump through the body. Potassium can help remove excess sodium from the body.

In the current study, researchers examined data on sodium and potassium levels in urine, as well as blood pressure, height, weight and eating habits from adults aged 40 to 59 in Japan, China, the UK and the US

Higher sodium levels were associated with elevated blood pressure for both men and women at all ages in the study, regardless of race and ethnicity or socioeconomic status.

The connection between sodium and blood pressure was similarly strong for both normal weight and obese people in the study, although the connection was weaker for overweight individuals who weren’t obese.

Potassium appeared to weaken the connection between dietary salt and elevated blood pressure only for people who had low sodium levels in their urine, the researchers also found.

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how dietary salt or other things people eat might directly alter blood pressure. Another limitation is that surveys used to assess eating habits can be unreliable snapshots of what people actually consume.

Even so, the results add to evidence that managing blood pressure requires paying attention to salt, said Cheryl Anderson, a researcher at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Even though potassium can help lessen the blood pressure-raising effects of sodium, eating more potassium isn’t a license to eat more sodium,” Anderson said.

The American Heart Association recommends the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet or a Mediterranean-style diet to help prevent cardiovascular disease. Both diets emphasize cooking with vegetable oils with unsaturated fats, eating nuts, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy products, whole grains, fish and poultry, and limiting red meat and added sugars and salt.

“There is data showing that when the DASH dietary pattern is combined with sodium reduction there are substantial effects on blood pressure,” Anderson said. “This can be as powerful as taking a drug prescription for high blood pressure.”

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Agencies
July 15,2020

The first COVID-19 vaccine tested in the US revved up people's immune systems just the way scientists had hoped, researchers reported Tuesday -- as the shots are poised to begin key final testing.

No matter how you slice this, this is good news, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government's top infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press.

The experimental vaccine, developed by Fauci's colleagues at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will start its most important step around July 27: A 30,000-person study to prove if the shots really are strong enough to protect against the coronavirus.

But Tuesday, researchers reported anxiously awaited findings from the first 45 volunteers who rolled up their sleeves back in March. Sure enough, the vaccine provided a hoped-for immune boost.

Those early volunteers developed what are called neutralizing antibodies in their bloodstream -- molecules key to blocking infection -- at levels comparable to those found in people who survived COVID-19, the research team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

This is an essential building block that is needed to move forward with the trials that could actually determine whether the vaccine does protect against infection, said Dr. Lisa Jackson of the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle, who led the study.

There's no guarantee but the government hopes to have results around the end of the year -- record-setting speed for developing a vaccine.

The vaccine requires two doses, a month apart.

There were no serious side effects. But more than half the study participants reported flu-like reactions to the shots that aren't uncommon with other vaccines -- fatigue, headache, chills, fever and pain at the injection site. For three participants given the highest dose, those reactions were more severe; that dose isn't being pursued.

Some of those reactions are similar to coronavirus symptoms but they're temporary, lasting about a day and occur right after vaccination, researchers noted.

Small price to pay for protection against COVID, said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a vaccine expert who wasn't involved with the study.

He called the early results a good first step, and is optimistic that final testing could deliver answers about whether it's really safe and effective by the beginning of next year.

It would be wonderful. But that assumes everything's working right on schedule, Schaffner cautioned.

Moderna's share price jumped nearly 15 percent in trading after US markets closed. Shares of the company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have nearly quadrupled this year.

Tuesday's results only included younger adults. The first-step testing later was expanded to include dozens of older adults, the age group most at risk from COVID-19.

Those results aren't public yet but regulators are evaluating them. Fauci said final testing will include older adults, as well as people with chronic health conditions that make them more vulnerable to the virus and Black and Latino populations likewise affected.

Nearly two dozen possible COVID-19 vaccines are in various stages of testing around the world. Candidates from China and Britain's Oxford University also are entering final testing stages.

The 30,000-person study will mark the world's largest study of a potential COVID-19 vaccine so far. And the NIH-developed shot isn't the only one set for such massive U.S. testing, crucial to spot rare side effects. The government plans similar large studies of the Oxford candidate and another by Johnson & Johnson; separately, Pfizer Inc. is planning its own huge study.

Already, people can start signing up to volunteer for the different studies.

People think this is a race for one winner. Me, I'm cheering every one of them on, said Fauci, who directs NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

We need multiple vaccines. We need vaccines for the world, not only for our own country. Around the world, governments are investing in stockpiles of hundreds of millions of doses of the different candidates, in hopes of speedily starting inoculations if any are proven to work.

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Agencies
July 25,2020

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown saw many people turning chefs overnight, but those who could not turned to online delivery of food. And not just any food, as per a new report, Indians "craved the most for Biryani" during the lockdown.

The "StatEATistics report: The Quarantine Edition" from food delivery platform Swiggy found that Indians ordered biryani over "5.5 lakh times" from their favourite restaurants.

The new normal might have opened a pandora's box of behavioral changes, but some old habits die hard like the love for Biryani, which took the top spot for overall orders. It was followed by butter naan and masala dosa at 3,35,185 and 3,31,423, respectively.

Biryani has topped the list of most ordered dishes for the fourth year in a row, the food delivery platform noted.

Indians didn't forget to indulge their sweet tooth in the uncertain months of lockdown. Their favourite comfort food during the lockdown period was the moist and decadent Choco Lava cake, ordered around 1,29,000 times.

"The humble Gulab Jamun (84,558) and chic Butterscotch Mousse cake (27,317) followed suit," said the report derived from Swiggy's order analysis in the past few months across cities that it is present in.

Also, as birthday parties moved to video calls, and virtual cake cutting sessions, according to the food delivery platform, it delivered nearly "1,20,000 cakes" to complete these celebrations.

According to the report, on average, "65,000 meal orders" were placed by 8 pm each day to make sure food arrived in time for dinner.

"It was the busiest hour for Swiggy delivery partners and restaurants. On average, they (customers) chose to tip Rs.23.65, with one particularly generous customer tipping Rs. 2500!," it added.

For those who only relied on home-made food during the quarantine, Swiggy delivered a whooping 323 million kgs of onions and 56 million kgs of bananas through its grocery section and hence ensured that its consumers were all stocked up.

That said, it also took care of the 'quick-fix meal' tribe -- consumers who resort to the evergreen college hacks of living on instant noodles.

"Around 3,50,000 packets of this ideal easy to cook meal were ordered during the lockdown," it said.

In all, Swiggy delivered 40 million orders across food, groceries, medicines and other household items during India's lockdowns. It also delivered over 73,000 bottles of sanitizers and hand wash along with 47,000 face masks as the definition of essentials' changed during these uncertain times.

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Agencies
June 21,2020

Lower neighbourhood socioeconomic status and greater household crowding increase the risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, warn researchers.

"Our study shows that neighbourhood socioeconomic status and household crowding are strongly associated with risk of infection," said study lead author Alexander Melamed from Columbia University in the US.

"This may explain why Black and Hispanic people living in these neighbourhoods are disproportionately at risk for contracting the virus," Melamed added.

For the findings, published in the journal JAMA, the researchers examined the relationships between COVID-19 infection and neighbourhood characteristics in 396 women who gave birth during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak in New York City. Since March 22, all women admitted to the hospitals for delivery have been tested for the virus, which gave the researchers the opportunity to detect all infections -- including infections with no symptoms -- in a defined population

The strongest predictor of COVID-19 infection among these women was residence in a neighbourhood where households with many people are common.The findings showed that women who lived in a neighbourhood with high household membership were three times more likely to be infected with the virus. Neighbourhood poverty also appeared to be a factor, the researchers said.Women were twice as likely to get COVID-19 if they lived in neighbourhoods with a high poverty rate, although that relationship was not statistically significant due to the small sample size.

The study revealed that there was no association between infection and population density.

"New York City has the highest population density of any city in the US, but our study found that the risks are related more to density in people's domestic environments rather than density in the city or within neighbourhoods," says co-author Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman."

The knowledge that SARS-CoV-2 infection rates are higher in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and among people who live in crowded households could help public health officials target preventive measures," the authors wrote.

Recently, another study published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, showed that dense areas were associated with lower COVID-19 death rates.

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