Potassium citrate has similar blood pressure-lowering effects as the best-studied potassium compound, potassium chloride, according to a UK study.

In comments to Reuters Health, Dr. Graham A. MacGregor said the important role of potassium in regulating blood pressure has been demonstrated in carefully controlled studies using potassium chloride and inactive “placebo” tablets. But it has not been clear, until now, how far other potassium salts lowered blood pressure.

“These results support other evidence for an increase in potassium intake and indicate that potassium does not need to be given in the form of chloride to lower blood pressure,” MacGregor and colleagues from St. George’s Hospital Medical School in London write in the American Heart Association’s journal hypertension.

“Increasing the consumption of foods high in potassium is likely to have the same effect on blood pressure as potassium chloride,” the researches say.

They compared the effects on blood pressure of potassium chloride or potassium citrate in 14 adults with hypertension - that is, with blood pressure readings above 140/90. The participants took one compound for 1 week, waited a week, and then took the other for a week.

Average blood pressure at the start of the study was 151/93. It fell significantly to 140/88 with potassium chloride and to 138/88 mm Hg with potassium citrate.

“Our short-term study shows that potassium citrate is as effective as potassium chloride, and this supports the evidence that the main effect of increasing fruit and vegetable intake on blood pressure is due to the increase in potassium intake,” MacGregor said.

SOURCE: Hypertension, April 2005.