Replacing salt with a reduced-sodium salt substitute saves money and prevents death and disease in people at risk of stroke, according to new research.
Findings from the research are published in the journal, Circulation.
Previous research showed that salt substitution reduced stroke risk by 14 per cent and the number of strokes and heart attacks combined by 13 percent.
This new analysis reveals that it is also cost-efficient.
Senior author Thomas Lung, Senior Research Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health said:
“Our research has already shown that salt substitutes reduce the risks of stroke, heart attack and premature death, but now we can say for the first time that they also reduce healthcare costs.
“Salt substitution is a particularly low cost and effective intervention in countries where most of sodium in the diet comes from the salt added during home cooking, which can be easily substituted.”
The Salt Substitute and Stroke Study enrolled 21,000 adults with either a history of stroke or poorly controlled blood pressure from 600 villages in rural areas of five Chinese provinces.
Participants were provided 20g of salt substitute per day, free of charge – enough to cover all household cooking.
Those in other villages continued to use normal salt.
More than 3,000 people had a stroke during an average five-year follow-up.
For those using the substitute, the risk of stroke was reduced by 14 per cent.
The new analysis weighed up the cost of salt substitute verses the reduced number of hospitalisations from stroke and associated quality of life benefits.
Salt substitution was found to be cost-saving at the lowest local market price and cost-effective up to an estimated 1.5 times the current highest market price and 10.3 times the price of a widely available salt substitute in China.
“We’ve shown that the use of salt substitute by patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease is a practical and cost-effective way of reducing cardiovascular risk,” said study author Dr Maoyi Tian, Honorary Senior Fellow at The George Institute China.
“The extent to which a patient will benefit depends on how much of their dietary salt is replaced with salt substitute, and the cost-effectiveness will depend mainly on the price of the salt substitute,” he added.
“Salt substitution is now the only salt reduction intervention with what we would call ‘grade one evidence’ demonstrating cost-saving protection against cardiovascular disease and should now be considered by all countries planning or implementing sodium reduction campaigns.”
