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| |  Small Amount Of Potassium May Delay Onset Of High Blood Pressure CHICAGO -- May 27, 1997 -- Oral intake of potassium can significantly reduce blood pressure, according to an article in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Paul K. Whelton, M.D., M.Sc., formerly with The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and School of Medicine, Baltimore, Md., and colleagues analysed a wide body of research on oral potassium intake and its effect on blood pressure. Their intent was to seek resolution to the question of whether potassium is effective in controlling high blood pressure and the degree to which it might be effective. "It has been suggested that potassium supplementation results in reduction of systolic and diastolic blood pressure,” the authors write, “yet the role of potassium supplementation in treating and preventing high blood pressure remains controversial. In part, this may be because some large and rigorously designed trials in hypertensive and non-hypertensive subjects are among those yielding the least impressive results." When the researchers combined the results of 33 randomized, controlled trials with 2,609 participants in which potassium supplementation was the only difference between the intervention and control conditions, they found potassium was effective in lowering blood pressure. The analysis found a significant reduction in mean systolic (the first number of the blood pressure reading) and diastolic (the second number) blood pressure. Potassium intake resulted in a mean drop of 3.11 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) for the systolic reading and 1.97 mm Hg for the diastolic reading. The potassium appeared to be particularly effective in studies in which participants were concurrently exposed to a high intake of sodium. The authors conclude that even a small amount of potassium intake may play an important role in forestalling the onset of high blood pressure and that increased potassium intake should be considered as a recommendation for the prevention and treatment of high blood pressure, especially in those who are unable to reduce their sodium intake. "Oral potassium supplementation appeared to be well tolerated in all studies included in our meta-analysis,” the authors write, “although only two reports provided specific accounting of type and frequency of treatment-related adverse effects.” According to the authors, adverse effects in both trials were fairly insignificant and primarily consisted of abdominal pain, belching and flatulence -- only one individual stopped taking potassium because of gastrointestinal tract symptoms. Adverse effects reported in another study included stomach pains, bright-red blood in stools, nausea or vomiting, and diarrhea. "Although most of the clinical trial experience to date emanates from studies in which potassium was administered in pill form as a chloride salt,” they add, “there is little reason to suspect a different outcome after dietary supplementation and/or administration of other potassium salts provided potassium itself is sufficiently increased." Information cited in the article shows that a clinical trial of potassium supplementation in hypertension was reported as early as 1928. Since then, almost 60 reports of the blood pressure-lowering effects of potassium in humans have been published, about half of them randomized controlled trials, and most too small for definitive results. The researchers say pooling of results allows more precise estimates of intervention effect and exploration of the basis for outcome heterogeneity.
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