A study released today at the American Heart Association's 62nd Annual Fall Conference of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research in Atlanta revealed that people who suffer from uncontrolled high blood pressure, experiencing no benefit from the blood pressure-lowering drugs that they take, can adopt a low-salt diet in a view to control their blood pressure.

"A high-salt diet contributes importantly to treatment-resistant hypertension (high blood pressure)," Dr. Eduardo Pimenta from the Dante Pazzanese Institute of Cardiology, Sao Paulo, Brazil, told Reuters Health.

High blood pressure engulfs nearly 40% of adults in the UK and contributes as a major risk reason behind heart attack, heart failure, kidney disease and stroke.

In 2001, 90 million prescriptions for blood pressure lowering drugs were issued by the NHS for a worth £840 million.

The study analyzed the impact of a restricted-salt diet on 24-hour blood pressure levels, obtained using a recorder worn continuously for 24 hours, in a reported 13 adults with treatment-resistant hypertension included in the study.

In addition, the crossover research tested the low- and high-salt diets for a period of seven days separated by a two-week "washout" period, after which the subjects swapped their groups.

Pimenta and colleagues revealed that the amount of sodium washed out in urine over 24-hours was significantly reduced due to the intake of low-salt diet compared to the high-salt diet.

"We were expecting blood pressure reduction with low-salt diet but the reduction was larger than we expected," Pimenta posited.

Moreover, the study extended a confirmation that a high-salt diet can assist in impairing blood vessel function and cause one to retain fluid, despite of taking a diuretic therapy.