This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Women's Health  • Women's Health, Other  • Hypertension  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Although Dr Nash and colleagues¹ generally avoided causal language in characterizing their observed association between blood lead levels and blood pressure in postmenopausal women, they nevertheless concluded that "these results demonstrate effects of lead" and called for "continued efforts to reduce lead levels." They did not state, however, how this might be accomplished. Because the principal source of lead for postmenopausal women is from their own skeletons, a high calcium intake would be a simple and obvious way to reduce resorptive release of lead into the blood. Even so, it is not clear that preventing an increase in blood lead levels, by itself, would prevent an increase in blood pressure.

Blood lead levels were extraordinarily low among the postmenopausal participants that Nash et al analyzed. The slight increases that they observed do not prove a toxic effect of lead; instead, this reflects increased mobilization of calcium from . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Blood Lead Levels and Hypertension
Hans W. Hense
JAMA. 2003;290(4):460.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Blood Lead Levels and Hypertension—Reply
Denis Nash and Ellen Silbergeld
JAMA. 2003;290(4):461.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Blood Lead, Blood Pressure, and Hypertension in Perimenopausal and Postmenopausal Women
Denis Nash, Laurence Magder, Mark Lustberg, Roger W. Sherwin, Robert J. Rubin, Rachel B. Kaufmann, and Ellen K. Silbergeld
JAMA. 2003;289(12):1523-1532.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT