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Gout linked to 17% higher risk for dementia in elderly
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AMSTERDAM — Gout is independently associated with an 17% to 20% increased risk for incident dementia among elderly patients, according to findings presented the EULAR Annual Congress.
“There has been, in the literature, a lot of interest about what hyperuricemia does to the brain,” Alexander So, PhD, FRCP, of Lausanne University Hospital, said during his presentation of data from a study led by Jasvinder A. Singh, MD, MPH, of the University of Alabama Birmingham, who was unable to attend the congress. “Work from previous years have shown that perhaps hyperuricemia is actually good for you, because it protects the brain from bad diseases. There is also some data to show that having gout may be bad for cardiovascular disease. So, the question is, ‘In patients with gout, what happens to cognitive status with potent gout over the years?’”
To determine whether elderly patients with gout have an increased risk for incident dementia, Singh and colleagues conducted an observational cohort study using the 5% Medicare claims data. They were able to identify 65,324 patients with incident dementia, out of a cohort of 1.23 million Medicare beneficiaries.
The researchers used multivariate-adjusted Cox proportional hazard models to determine the association between gout and dementia, adjusting for age, race, sex, comorbidities and medications commonly used for cardiac disease and gout.
According to the researchers, the crude incidence rate for dementia in patients with gout was 17.9 per 1,000 person-years, compared with 10.9 for those without gout. Following multivariable-adjusted analyses, the researchers found that gout was independently associated with a significant greater hazard ratio of incident dementia (HR = 1.17; 95% CI, 1.13-1.21). These findings were confirmed by sensitivity analyses, according to So. Further, patients who were older were associated with 3.3- and 6.3-fold hazards of dementia, compared with patients aged 65 to 74 years.
“Our study found a considerable increased risk of dementia associated with gout in the elderly,” Singh said in a press release released by EULAR. “Further study is needed to explore these relationships and understand the pathogenic pathways involved in this increased risk." – by Jason Laday
Reference:
Singh JA. Abstract OP0182. Presented at: EULAR Annual Congress; June 13-16, 2018; Amsterdam.
Disclosure: Singh reports grant and research funding from Takeda and Savient, as well as consulting fees from Savient, Takeda, Regeneron, Merz, Iroko, Bioiberica, Crealta/Horizon, Allergan pharmaceuticals, WebMD, UBM LLC and the American College of Rheumatology.