Low Salt Diet and Heart Disease

Lower salt consumption may cut cases of heart disease, stroke.
ABC World News (1/20, story 9, 0:30, Sawyer) reported that "new research says" cutting salt consumption to "no more than one rounded teaspoon...every day in everything" would "prevent up to 120,000 heart disease cases, 66,000 strokes and save 92,000 lives in this country every single year."
The New York Times (1/21, A18, Belluck) reports that for the study, appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers used "a computerized model that analyzed previous studies to estimate the benefits of salt reduction." They found that although "everyone would benefit from less salt...people at higher risk for heart problems -- blacks, people with hypertension, and people over 65 -- would benefit most."
The study showed that a national program to lower salt consumption could save between $10 billion and $24 billion in health costs each year, the Wall Street Journal (1/21, Wang) reports. The researchers noted that for each dollar spent on such a program, the federal government could save $6 to $12 in Medicare health expenditures, Reuters (1/21, Emery) reports.
Bloomberg News (1/20, Thomas) reported, "The researchers estimated that lowering daily salt intake by three grams would have health benefits at least as large as reducing smoking by 50 percent or using statin drugs to treat people with a low or intermediate risk for heart disease."