Deans' stroke musings: Intake of potassium- and magnesium-enriched salt improves functional outcome after stroke: a randomized, multicenter, double-blind controlled trial

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Intake of potassium- and magnesium-enriched salt improves functional outcome after stroke: a randomized, multicenter, double-blind controlled trial

Only 4 months old. How incompetent is your stroke hospital if this isn't being already used? Everyone involved in leadership should be fired if not. We need to clear out all the dead and lazy wood in stroke. 10 million yearly stroke survivors can make a lot of noise and effect change, so start screaming at your doctors about 100% recovery.This is a start, demand your stroke hospital use it.

Intake of potassium- and magnesium-enriched salt improves functional outcome after stroke: a randomized, multicenter, double-blind controlled trial

Pan WH¹, Lai YH^2,³, Yeh WT², Chen JR⁴, Jeng JS⁵, Bai CH^6,⁷, Lin RT^8,⁹, Lee TH¹⁰, Chang KC¹¹, Lin HJ¹², Hsiao CF^13,¹⁴, Chern CM^15,¹⁶, Lien LM¹⁷, Liu CH^18,¹⁹, Chen WH¹⁷, Chang A¹⁷.

Author information

1: Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan; pan@ibms.sinica.edu.tw.
2: Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
3: Department of Biochemical Science and Technology, College of Life Science, and.
4: Department of Neurology, Yunlin Christian Hospital, Yunlin, Taiwan.
5: Stroke Center Intensive Care Unit, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
6: Department of Public Health, College of Medicine, and.
7: School of Public Health, College of Public Health and Nutrition, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
8: Department of Neurology, College of Medicine, and.
9: Department of Neurology, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
10: Department of Neurology, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital Linkou Medical Center and College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
11: Department of Neurology, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
12: Department of Neurology, Chi Mei Medical Center, Tainan, Taiwan.
13: Division of Biometry, Department of Agronomy, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
14: Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Institute of Population Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan.
15: Institute of Brain Science, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.
16: Department of Medical Education and Research, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
17: Department of Neurology, Shin-Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; and.
18: Graduate Institute of Integrated Medicine, College of Chinese Medicine, and.
19: Department of Neurology, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan.

Abstract

Background: Stroke is one of the leading causes of mortality and neurologic deficits. Management measures to improve neurologic outcomes are in great need. Our previous intervention trial in elderly subjects successfully used salt as a carrier for potassium, demonstrating a 41% reduction in cardiovascular mortality by switching to potassium-enriched salt. Dietary magnesium has been associated with lowered diabetes and/or stroke risk in humans and with neuroprotection in animals.Objective: Because a large proportion of Taiwanese individuals are in marginal deficiency states for potassium and for magnesium and salt is a good carrier for minerals, it is justifiable to study whether further enriching salt with magnesium at an amount near the Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) amount may provide additional benefit for stroke recovery.Design: This was a double-blind, randomized controlled trial comprising 291 discharged stroke patients with modified Rankin scale (mRS) ≤4. There were 3 arms: 1) regular salt (Na salt) (n = 99), 2) potassium-enriched salt (K salt) (n = 97), and 3) potassium- and magnesium-enriched salt (K/Mg salt) (n = 95). The NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS), Barthel Index (BI), and mRS were evaluated at discharge, at 3 mo, and at 6 mo. A good neurologic performance was defined by NIHSS = 0, BI = 100, and mRS ≤1.Results: After the 6-mo intervention, the proportion of patients with good neurologic performance increased in a greater magnitude in the K/Mg salt group than in the K salt group and the Na salt group, in that order. The K/Mg salt group had a significantly increased OR (2.25; 95% CI: 1.09, 4.67) of achieving good neurologic performance compared with the Na salt group. But the effect of K salt alone (OR: 1.58; 95% CI: 0.77, 3.22) was not significant.Conclusions: This study suggests that providing the DRI amount of magnesium and potassium together long term is beneficial for stroke patient recovery from neurologic deficits. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02910427.