Salt and potassium intake among adult Ghanaians: WHO-SAGE Ghana Wave 3

Abstract Though Ghana has high hypertension prevalence, the country lacks current national salt consumption data required to build and enhance advocacy for salt reduction. We explored the characteristics of a randomly selected sub sample that had valid urine collection, along with matched survey, anthropometric and BP data (n = 839, mean age = 60y), from the World Health Organization’s Study on global AGEing and adult health (WHO-SAGE), Ghana Wave 3, n = 3053). We also investigated the relationship between salt intake and blood pressure (BP) among the cohort. BP was measured in triplicate and 24 h urine was collected for the determination of urinary sodium (Na), potassium (K), creatinine (Cr) and iodine levels. Hypertension prevalence was 44.3%. Median salt intake was 8.3 g/day, higher in women compared to men (8.6, interquartile range (IQR) 7.5 g/day vs 7.5, IQR 7.4 g/day, p < 0.01), younger participants (18–49 y) compared to older ones (50+ y) (9.7, IQR 7.9 g/day vs 8.1, IQR 7.1 g/day, p < 0.01) and those with higher Body Mass Index (BMI) (> 30 kg/m2) compared to a healthy BMI (18.5–24.9 kg/m2) (10.04, IQR 5.1 g/day vs 6.2, IQR 5.6 g/day, p < 0.01). More than three quarters (77%, n = 647) of participants had salt intakes above the WHO maximum recommendation of 5 g/d, and nearly two thirds (65%, n = 548) had daily K intakes below the recommended level of 90 mmol. Dietary sodium to potassium (Na: K) ratios above 2 mmol/mmol were positively associated with increasing BP with age. Population-based interventions to reduce salt intake and increase K consumption are needed.