Don't take it with a pinch of salt: How sodium increases blood pressure via the gut microbiota

Recent evidence from preclinical and clinical studies have associated the gut microbiota with the development of hypertension, and, to a certain degree, implied a causative involvement of the gut microbiota to blood pressure (BP) regulation. Our understanding, however, of how the gut microbiota influences complex pathological processes that regulate BP, including the role of key dietary factors such as sodium intake, is still rudimentary. An elegant study published in Circulation Research sheds light to this issue. Here, we discuss the findings by Yan et al and associated studies that show the importance of the gut microbiota in BP response to salt intake.