Asymptomatic hyperuricemia and incident stroke in elderly Chinese patients without comorbidities

• Published in: European journal of clinical nutrition Vol. 73; no. 10; pp. 1392 - 1402
• Main Authors: Tu, W., Wu, J., Jian, G., Lori, J., Tang, Y., Cheng, H., Wu, X., Wang, N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.10.2019; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 692/499; 692/699/75/593/1370/534; Body weight; Cardiovascular diseases; Clinical Nutrition; Comorbidity; Diabetes mellitus; Epidemiology; Geriatrics; Gout; Health care facilities; Health risks; Hyperlipidemia; Hypertension; Hyperuricemia; Incidence; Internal Medicine; Kidney diseases; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Metabolic Diseases; Older people; Overweight; Public Health; Stroke; China
• ISSN: 0954-3007; 1476-5640; 1476-5640
• DOI: 10.1038/s41430-019-0405-1

Background/objectives Hyperuricemia is usually associated with other comorbidities; so it is difficult to distinguish the effects of hyperuricemia from other coexisting comorbidities in patients who suffer a stroke. Subject/methods Data for this study were collected from the patients of Kangjian Community Health Center of Shanghai. Selected participants ≥65 years of age were available at enrollment (2009–2013). Subjects were excluded if they had hypertension, diabetes mellitus, pre-existing cardiovascular disease, or hyperlipidemia. Further, patients who were overweight or obese, had gout or drug-treated hyperuricemia, or had chronic kidney disease were also excluded. Cox regression was used in order to assess the hazard ratio (HR) for the incidence of stroke events between hyperuricemic and normouricemic patients. Results A total of 3243 subjects without comorbidities (70.8 ± 6.0 years) were followed for 35.5 ± 3.0 months. Hyperuricemia conferred increased cumulative incident stroke events (6.9 versus 3.1%, odds ratio [OR] = 2.27, 95% confidence index [CI] 1.52–3.37, p  < 0.001). Male and female hyperuricemic subjects also showed a significantly higher incident stroke incidence than normouricemic subjects (6.1 versus 2.7%, OR = 2.34, 95% CI 1.31–4.18, p  = 0.003 and 7.6 versus 3.7%, OR = 2.16, 95% CI 1.25–3.72, p  = 0.005, respectively). Cox regression showed that hyperuricemia independently predicted incident stroke risk (HR = 2.32, 95%CI 1.56–3.45). Conclusion Asymptomatic hyperuricemia carried a significant risk of stroke events in Chinese elderly without comorbidities.