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Asymptomatic hyperuricemia and incident stroke in elderly Chinese patients without comorbidities

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 73, pages 1392–1402 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the patients who participated in the study.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 81460142).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Tu W, Wu J

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Endocrinology, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, Wuhan, China

    W. Tu

  2. Department of Nephrology, Affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    J. Wu, G. Jian, X. Wu & N. Wang

  3. Department of Biomedical Sciences University of South Florida, Tampa FL, USA

    J. Lori

  4. Kangjian Community Health Center, Xuhui District, Shanghai, China

    Y. Tang & H. Cheng

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Tu, W., Wu, J., Jian, G. et al. Asymptomatic hyperuricemia and incident stroke in elderly Chinese patients without comorbidities. Eur J Clin Nutr 73, 1392–1402 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-019-0405-1

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