Research

Hormonal

The association between salt intake and stroke risk is dose-dependent, with a 6% increase in stroke rate for every 50 mmol/day difference in sodium intake.

Every 50 mmol (approx 1.2g salt) of sodium you consume above your baseline adds about 6% to your stroke risk. Reducing intake incrementally yields proportional benefits.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Variance weighted least squares regression of the risk of stroke on the study specific difference between higher and lower categories of sodium intake... provided evidence of a significant direct association (exp(b)=1.06 (1.03 to 1.10)), indicating a 6% increase in the rate of stroke for every 50 mmol/day difference in sodium intake.
Pasquale Strazzullo et al. · BMJ · 2009

Why this rating

Derived from meta-regression of the same high-quality cohort data.

Source

Salt intake, stroke, and cardiovascular disease: meta-analysis of prospective studies

Pasquale Strazzullo et al. · BMJ · 2009

DOI 10.1136/bmj.b4567

Meta-analysis · 13 studiesCited 1,591×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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