CardioExchange Archive

March 23rd, 2015

Selections from Richard Lehman’s Literature Review: March 23rd

Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP

This week’s topics include antiplatelet therapy duration following bare metal or drug-eluting coronary stents, thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke, and more.

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January 19th, 2015

Optimum Salt Intake in Elderly Remains Elusive

Larry Husten, PHD

A new study offers fresh evidence that current salt recommendations should be taken with, well, a grain of salt. Current guidelines now recommend that everyone should have sodium intake levels below 2300 mg per day. For many people at higher risk, including everyone over 50 years of age, sodium intake should be below 1500 mg/d. […]

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December 10th, 2014

Focus on Getting Rid of Sugar, Not Salt, Say Authors

Larry Husten, PHD

Too much negative attention has been focused on salt and not enough on sugar, write two authors in Open Heart. Reviewing the extensive literature on salt and sugar, they write that the adverse effects of salt are less than the adverse effects of sugar. The evidence supporting efforts to reduce salt in the diet is […]

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August 18th, 2014

Selections from Richard Lehman’s Literature Review: August 18th

Richard Lehman, BM, BCh, MRCGP

This week’s topics include the three sodium studies from NEJM, the CLARIFY study, and more.

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August 18th, 2014

An Expert’s Perspective: Why Salt Is Not Like Tobacco and Why Guidelines Are Tricky

Larry Husten, PHD

At the center of this week’s renewed debate on salt was Salim Yusuf, the longtime influential and occasionally controversial cardiology researcher and clinical trialist based at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. I spoke with Yusuf before the publication of the New England Journal of Medicine papers, which include his own two papers from the PURE study. Yusuf was troubled by […]

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August 13th, 2014

Two New Studies Fuel the Debate Over Sodium

Larry Husten, PHD

Three papers and an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine are sure to throw fresh fuel on the ongoing fiery debate over sodium recommendations. Current guidelines recommend that people should limit their intake of sodium to 1.5  to 2.4 grams per day, but these recommendations are based on projections and have never been tested in […]

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May 16th, 2013

Salt Report from IOM Sparks Much Heat, Only a Little Light

Larry Husten, PHD

An Institute of Medicine report on salt earlier this week sparked a lot of controversy. The report concludes that there’s no evidence to support current efforts to lower salt consumption to less than 2300 mg/day. Unfortunately, the press coverage offered little insight into the science behind the issue. On the Knight Science Journalism Tracker blog, […]

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October 20th, 2011

CDC and AHA Tussle Over Just How Bad the Salt Problem Really Is

Larry Husten, PHD

No matter how you slice it, a lot of people in the U.S. consume too much sodium. But the CDC and the American Heart Association (AHA) disagree about just how bad the salt problem really is. U.S. guidelines currently recommend that everyone keep their daily sodium intake below 2300 mg, but a large subpopulation, including people aged […]

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May 3rd, 2011

Study Challenges Efforts to Lower Salt in the General Population

Larry Husten, PHD

A new study challenges the conventional wisdom that lowering salt intake in the general population will result in fewer cardiovascular events. In a paper in JAMA, Katarzyna Stolarz-Skrzypek and colleagues report the results of the study, in which they followed 3,681 European people without cardiovascular disease after measuring their blood pressure and urinary sodium excretion. After […]

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