Development and validation of a food frequency questionnaire for the assessment of sodium dietary intake in Lebanese adults -

Abstract

The global burden of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) has reached epidemic proportions, affecting both developed and developing countries. In Lebanon, CVDs account for around 60percent of all-cause mortality in persons aged 50 years and older and a recent national study showed that, among adults aged 25-64 years, 13.8percent were diagnosed with HTN. Being a major risk factor for coronary heart disease and stroke, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that high blood pressure is the leading preventable risk factor for death in the world. In addition to other lifestyle modifications and eating habits that have an impact on blood pressure risk, evidence shows a direct relationship between sodium intake and hypertension; and salt intake has been shown to correlate directly with blood pressure in different population groups. In Lebanon, the scarcity of data on dietary sodium intake highlights the need for rigorous investigations aiming at assessing the population’s intake of salt and sodium. Eventhough several methods have been proposed for the dietary assessment of Na (24 hour urinary sodium excretion; repeated 24 hour dietary recalls; 3-day or 7-day food records), the validity, accuracy and-or applicability of several of these methods have been often criticized in the literature. The use of FFQs for the assessment of dietary sodium intake has been proposed in the literature, but none has yet been developed and validated for the Lebanese population. The objective of the present study is to develop and validate a short food-frequency questionnaire for the assessment of dietary sodium intake among Lebanese adults. The questionnaire will be developed in a way as to include culture-specific food items that represent the biggest contributors to sodium intake. The developed questionnaire will be pilot-tested and its validity evaluated against urinary sodium excretion as well as a repeated 24 hour dietary recalls. The reliability of the questionnaire will also be tested. For this purpose, a convenient sample of 100