Validation of diet and urinary excretion derived estimates of sodium excretion against 24-hurine excretion in a worksite sample

Background and aims: To validate diet and urinary excretion derived estimates of sodium intake against those derived from 24-hurine collections in an Irish manufacturing workplace sample. Methods and results: We have compared daily sodium (Na) excretion from PABA validated 24-hurine collections with estimated daily sodium excretion derived from the following methods: a standard Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), a modified 24-hdietary recall method, arithmetic extrapolations from morning and evening spot urine samples, predicted sodium excretion from morning and evening spot urine samples using Tanaka's, Kawasaki's and the INTERSALT formula. All were assessed using mean differences (SD), Bland-Altman plots, correlation coefficients and ROC Area under the Curve (AUC) for a cut off of ≥100mmol of Na/day. The Food Choice at Work study recruited 802 participants aged 18-64 years, 50 of whom formed the validation sample. The mean measured 24-hurinary sodium (gold standard) was 138mmol/day (8.1g salt). At the group level, mean differences were small for both dietary methods and for the arithmetic extrapolations from morning urine samples. The Tanaka, Kawasaki and INTERSALT methods provided biased estimates of 24-hurinary sodium. R² values for all methods ranged from 0.1 to 0.48 and AUC findings from 0.57 to 0.76. Conclusion: Neither dietary nor spot urine sample methods provide adequate validity in the estimation of 24-hurinary sodium at the individual level. However, group mean errors from dietary methods are small and random and compare favourably with those from spot urine samples in this population.