TABLE 2—

Hypothetical Effects of Salt Reduction on Blood Pressure and Cardiovascular Mortality From the Population Perspective

	Cause-Specific Mortality
	Stroke	Ischemic Heart Disease	Other Vascular	Total
Prevalence of “exposure” to BP^a	1	1	1
Reduction of systolic BP (mm Hg) with low-salt diet	4.2	4.2	4.2
RR of mortality that relates to 4.2-mm BP reduction^b	0.84	0.88	0.86
Mortality base rate per 1000	0.47	1.00	0.50
Intervention mortality rate per 1000	0.39	0.88	0.43
Risk difference per 1000^c	−0.08	−0.12	−0.07
Number needed to treat	13 084	8239	14 764
Deaths prevented per 30 million population	2293	3641	2032	7966

Note. BP = blood pressure; RR = relative risk.

^{^a}

Prevalence of blood pressure is set at 1 because everyone is exposed.

^{^b}

Conversion based on hazard ratios per 20-mm decrease in systolic BP provided by Lewington et al.²⁶

^{^c}

RD = BR × (RR-1) (Newcombe and Bender¹⁹)