Soluble drugs have dangerous salt levels

The high salt content of common drugs such as soluble aspirin is putting people at risk of heart attack, stroke, and death, according to a major study.

Taking effervescent and soluble drugs such as paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin, vitamin C, calcium, or zinc leads to a 22% higher chance of suffering a stroke and a 28% increased risk of dying prematurely from any cause.

People on the drugs are also seven times more likely to develop high blood pressure than those taking similar drugs that contain no salt.

One of the drugs, metoclopramide, is taken regularly by migraine sufferers.

Lead researcher Jacob George of the University of Dundee said the findings were worrying and that millions who take the drugs were at risk.

His team is calling for the salt content of medicine to be labelled in the same way as for food.

“These drugs are also available over the counter. They can be picked up in the supermarket. We have no control over how many millions of people are buying these drugs.

“The ones we looked at were prescribed by GPs, but there’s a potentially much larger problem with these drugs being bought over the counter and in supermarkets.”

The main drugs in the British Medical Journal study are painkillers and analgesics, and vitamin C, zinc, and calcium tablets.

There is a clear dose-response effect, with people taking higher doses of the salt-containing drugs having a higher risk of suffering a health problem, said Dr George.

Some people need soluble drugs because they struggle to swallow pills, or because the drugs get into the system quicker.

However, not all drugs contain salt and some people may wish to move on to those prepared without salt, he said.

Because there is no clear labelling of drugs’ salt content, Dr George said the experts “struggled” to get the information and often had to call manufacturers “multiple times”.

Dr George said people in the study were collecting prescriptions on a fairly regular basis but it is not known for certain that they were taking the drugs every day.

What the study does show is that those with the highest number of prescriptions and doses, experienced the most negative impact on their health.

The researchers examined data from almost 1.3m people who were given at least two prescriptions of salt-containing drugs, or who were taking the same drugs without salt. The patients were typically followed for seven years.

The results show that, overall, people on the salt-containing drugs were 16% more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, or death from a vascular condition than those on the non-salt drugs.