Diets high in sodium are damaging to the body for many different reasons, particularly because research has tied this to increased blood pressure for decades, as scientists and nutritionists all over the world warn about salt intake risks - but a new study shows there may be another reason to keep it to a minimum.
New research from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology has shed light on another of the many possible salt intake risks, as a study has uncovered that there may be relation between diets high in sodium and the likelihood of developing multiple sclerosis at some point in life.
Multiple sclerosis (MS for short) is a very serious autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system and disrupts bodily processes of physical, mental and even psychiatric natures - and developing might be one of the many high salt intake risks.
According to University Herald, for the study on high salt intake risks, the researchers used mice: taking three genetically different groups of the rodent, scientists fed them either a high salt diet or a control one, then inducing a disease that mimics the effects of MS in these animals.
In one of the genetic groups, it was evident that both male and female mice that had consumed a lot of sodium had worse signs of the disease, prompting annotations regarding the high salt intake risks in relation to this condition.
However, one of the genetic groups saw no response to salt intake when it came to the signs of the disease, prompting scientists to be convinced that genetics were a much bigger part of the condition.
"We hope to provide a comprehensive understanding of how and why environmental factors interact with individuals' unique genetic make up to influence autoimmune diseases such as MS," said one of the researchers behind the study, Ph. D. Dimitry N. Krementsov, according to Medical XPress.
As Science Daily reports, the salt intake risks study was published on the FASEB Journal under the title "Exacerbation of autoimmune neuroinflammation by dietary sodium is genetically controlled and sex specific."
