LAUSR

Background Unhealthy eating habits is a top contributor to chronic disease burden in United States. Per American Heart Association, excessive sodium intake can raise blood pressure. Objective To determine correlation between sodium consumption and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP) in adults from 2009 to 2014. Study Design, Setting, Participants Cross-sectional study which examined dietary intake of sample population derived from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Study participants surveyed for sodium intake (mg/day) and physical examinations were conducted where systolic and diastolic BP were recorded. Inclusion criteria included adults age 18-55 years. Our dataset contained 29,404 participants; of these, 11,441 participants met our inclusion criteria and constitute our study sample (2,424 missing data). Amongst these, 5,529 (48.33%) were men and 5,912 (51.67%) were women. In our study sample, the mean age was 35.90 (SD = 11.25). Our study sample constituted 16.05% Mexican Americans, 9.92% other Hispanics, 38.60% Non-Hispanic White, 21.70% Non-Hispanic Black, and 13.73% other Race - including Multi-Racial. Measurable Outcome/Analysis Exposure variable is the consumption of sodium (mg per day). Outcome measure is average systolic and diastolic BP results collected from participants. Spearman Correlation along with regression analysis to quantitatively define the strength of association between sodium consumption vs systolic and diastolic BP. Results Mean sodium intake 3057.04 mg (SD 1688.58, IQR 1945). Mean systolic BP 118.42 mmHg (SD 18.36, IQR 22.0) and mean diastolic BP 65.78 mmHg (SD 14.98, IQR 17.33). No statistically significant correlation and linear relationship found between sodium intake and systolic BP or sodium intake and diastolic BP in both men and women. Conclusions There is no association between dietary sodium intake and systolic BP and diastolic BP. This may be due to the size of our sample, use of medications and the fact that the sodium intake was only based on 1 day. Average daily sodium intake was noted to be higher than the recommended daily allowance of 2300 mg/day.