Fig. 1

a Sex Stratified Associations Between Sodium Intake and Overall and Cause-specific Mortality in Multivariable-Adjusted Cubic Spline Regression Models. Analyses were adjusted for age at baseline, BMI, alcohol consumption, smoking status (never, former, current or missing), physical activity, race or ethnic group, education, marital status, diabetes (yes vs. no), health status, vitamin supplement use, total energy intake, and the Healthy Eating Index 2015 (HEI-2015) score excluding the sodium component. For women, the risk estimates were additionally adjusted for postmenopausal hormone therapy (yes vs. no). The solid line denotes the HR of overall mortality according to sodium intake with a four-knot cubic spline selected at the 5th, 25th, 75th, and 95th percentiles of intake, dashed lines and shaded areas represent the 95% confidence intervals, blue indicates men and red indicates women. b Sex Stratified Associations Between Potassium Intake and Overall and Cause-specific Mortality in Multivariable-Adjusted Cubic Spline Regression Models. Analyses were adjusted for age at baseline, BMI, alcohol consumption, smoking status (never, former, current or missing), physical activity, race or ethnic group, education, marital status, diabetes (yes vs. no), health status, vitamin supplement use, total energy intake, and the Healthy Eating Index 2015 (HEI-2015) score components of sodium, seafood and plant protein, saturated fat, fatty acids and refined grains. For women, the risk estimates were additionally adjusted for postmenopausal hormone therapy (yes vs. no). The solid line denotes the HR of overall mortality according to potassium intake with a four-knot cubic spline selected at the 5th, 25th, 75th, and 95th percentiles of intake, dashed lines and shaded areas represent the 95% confidence intervals, blue indicates men and red indicates women. c Sex Stratified Associations Between Sodium–Potassium Ratio and Overall and Cause-specific Mortality in Multivariable-Adjusted Cubic Spline Regression Models. Analyses were adjusted for age at baseline, BMI, alcohol consumption, smoking status (never, former, current or missing), physical activity, race or ethnic group, education, marital status, diabetes (yes vs. no), health status, vitamin supplement use, total energy intake, and the Healthy Eating Index 2015 (HEI-2015) score components of seafood and plant protein, saturated fat, fatty acids and refined grains. For women, the risk estimates were additionally adjusted for postmenopausal hormone therapy (yes vs. no). The solid line denotes the HR of overall mortality according to sodium–potassium ratio with a four-knot cubic spline selected at the 5th, 25th, 75th, and 95th percentiles of intake, dashed lines and shaded areas represent the 95% confidence intervals, blue indicates men and red indicates women