High Sodium Sensitivity Implicates Nocturnal Hypertension in Essential Hypertension

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Abstract
We investigated the relationship between sodium sensitivity and diurnal variation of blood pressure in patients with essential hypertension. Twenty-eight inpatients with essential hypertension were maintained on high sodium (12 to 15 g NaCl per day) and low sodium (1 to 3 g NaCl per day) diets for 1 week each. Twenty-four-hour blood pressure and urinary sodium excretion were measured at the end of each diet period, and the sodium sensitivity index was calculated as the ratio of the change in mean arterial pressure to the change in urinary sodium excretion rate by sodium restriction. Patients whose average mean arterial pressure was lowered more than 10% by sodium restriction were assigned to the sodium-sensitive group (n=16); the remaining patients, whose mean arterial pressure was lowered by less than 10%, were assigned to the non-sodium-sensitive group (n=12). In the non-sodium-sensitive group, mean arterial pressure and heart rate fell during the nighttime, and average values of systolic, diastolic, an...