Central Illustration.

Spline plot of average sodium intake based on multiple 24hr excretions and total mortality in observational analysis of usual intake.

Shown is the hazard ratio for total mortality over more than 20 years as a function of usual sodium intake averaged over 3-7 urine collections over 1-3 years at baseline. Mortality is lowest among those with usual sodium intake less than 2300 mg/24hr and highest among those with levels above 6000 mg/24hr. There is a significant direct linear effect of sodium with mortality (p=0.048) with no evidence of non-linearity (p=0.90) in spline analysis.