The Calcium Hypothesis on Hypertension

Excerpt

To the editor: The critique of the calcium deficiency hypothesis of hypertension offered by Kaplan and Meese ( 1 ) provides a substantial argument against the "theoretical construct" proposed to explain the inverse relationship between dietary calcium and blood pressure found in the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I) by McCarron and colleagues (2). The reasons for rejecting the epidemiologic methods are less compelling. Limitations of dietary recall should apply equally to all study subjects regardless of blood pressure. Similarly, brief experimental increases in calcium intake may be unrelated to the effect of lifetime dietary consumption of