BEIJING, March 1 — A Chinese study suggests that it’s better to take medicine in tablet form rather than in effervescent form. The reason is that the sodium content of the latter could be dangerous for our health. If consumed daily, they may even increase the risk of heart disease by 1 per cent.

Fizzy tablets that get added to water are often easier to swallow and their effects are felt more quickly by the body, which makes them popular choices with patients for their pharmaceuticals. However, according to a study published in February by the National Library of Medicine, they may slightly increase the risk of heart disease and stroke due to the presence of salt in their composition.

That’s because to get the treatment to dissolve into water, pharmaceutical companies add sodium. Sodium is one of the principal chemical elements of salt. If they are taken daily, these soluble tablets can exceed the 2g of sodium recommended by the WHO per day.

A 1 per cent higher risk

To conduct this research, Professor Chao Zeng of Central South University in Changsha, China and his team followed nearly 300,000 of the 17 million people whose medical records are in the UK Health Improvement Network database for one year. These 300,000 patients, with an average age of 71, were prescribed acetaminophen in various forms.

Among them, 4,532 had high blood pressure and were taking soluble acetaminophen. The researchers compared them to 146,866 patients with hypertension (high blood pressure), but who were being treated with acetaminophen tablets, thus without sodium. The results show a 5.6 per cent risk of heart attack, stroke or heart failure for the former, compared to 4.6 per cent for the hypertensive patients treated without sodium.

Even in people without hypertension, the risks are greater. The study compared 5,351 people without hypertension treated with effervescent acetaminophen to 141,948 patients without hypertension treated with solid acetaminophen. For the first group, the risk of heart disease was 4.4 per cent, compared with 3.7 per cent for the second.

For the researchers, the consumption of hidden salt, not only in food, but also in medicines, should be more regulated in order to reduce risk of cardiovascular disease. One way to be more aware of the sodium content of a drug could be for companies to indicate it more prominently on drug packaging. — ETX Studio