title: How are we to determine whether dietary interventions do more good than harm to hypertensive patients?
abstract: This paper categorizes studies of dietary interventions in hypertensive patients into five categories based on the levels of evidence: level I, randomized trials with low false-positive (alpha) and low false-negative (beta) errors (high power); level II, randomized trials with high false-positive (alpha) and (or) high false-negative (beta) errors (low power); level III, nonrandomized concurrent cohort comparisons between contemporaneous patients who did and did not receive a nutritional intervention; level IV, nonrandomized historical cohort comparisons between current patients who did receive a nutritional intervention and former patients (from the same institution or from the literature) who did not; level V, case series without controls.
mesh_terms: D001794:Blood Pressure; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004032:Diet; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000178:diet therapy* / Q000503:physiopathology; D010349:Patient Compliance