Relation of Dietary Sodium Intake With Subclinical Markers of Cardiovascular Disease (from MESA)

Abstract

The associations between dietary sodium intake and markers of subclinical cardiovascular disease (CVD), such as high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) and amino terminal pro b-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), may provide mechanistic insight into the relation between dietary sodium and cardiovascular events. We studied 6,131 participants of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, who were free of clinical CVD at baseline. Food frequency questionnaires were used to assess estimated sodium intake (ESI) at baseline. We tested the associations between 5 quintiles of ESI (quintile 1: 0.2 to 1.3 grams/day, quintile 2: 1.3 to 1.8 grams/day, quintile 3: 1.8 to 2.4 grams/day, quintile 4: 2.4 to 3.2 grams/day, and quintile 5: 3.2 to 9.9 grams/day) with cross-sectional and 5-year longitudinal change in hs-cTnT and NT-proBNP concentrations. Restricted cubic spline plots were utilized to explore the shape of the associations between ESI and biomarker outcomes. A cross-sectional association between baseline sodium intake and hs-cTnT (but not NT-proBNP) was observed, driven predominantly by a strong positive relation at an intake range of 0.2 to 2.4 g/day. Conversely, a longitudinal association between baseline sodium intake and NT-proBNP (but not hs-cTnT) was observed, driven predominantly by a strong positive relation at intake levels ≥2.4 g/day. In conclusion, temporal shifts in the association between increased ESI and markers of subclinical CVD, hs-cTnT in the short term and NT-proBNP in the longer term, point to the complex pathobiology of the association between sodium intake and CVD. There was also no consistent evidence supporting a J-curve (i.e., excess biomarker values at very low ESI).