Prevalence of gout and hyperuricemia in the US general population: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2008

TLDR

The study estimates the prevalence of gout and hyperuricemia in U.S. adults using NHANES 2007‑2008 data and examines secular trends compared with NHANES‑III. Using 5,707 NHANES participants, gout was identified by physician‑diagnosed history, hyperuricemia by serum urate >7.0 mg/dl in men and >5.7 mg/dl in women, and comparisons were made with 18,825 participants from NHANES‑III.

Abstract

To estimate the prevalence of gout and hyperuricemia based on the latest nationally representative sample of US men and women (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey [NHANES] 2007-2008).Using data from 5,707 participants in NHANES 2007-2008, we estimated the prevalence of gout and hyperuricemia. During home interviews for NHANES 2007-2008, all participants were asked about a history of health professional- or physician-diagnosed gout. Our primary definition of hyperuricemia was a serum urate level of >7.0 mg/dl for men and >5.7 mg/dl for women. We explored potential secular trends in these estimates and their possible explanations by comparing them with estimates based on 18,825 participants in NHANES-III (1988-1994).The prevalence of gout among US adults in 2007-2008 was 3.9% (8.3 million individuals). The prevalence among men was 5.9% (6.1 million), and the prevalence among women was 2.0% (2.2 million). The mean serum urate levels were 6.14 mg/dl among men and 4.87 mg/dl among women, corresponding to hyperuricemia prevalences of 21.2% and 21.6%, respectively. These estimates were higher than those in NHANES-III, with differences of 1.2% in the prevalence of gout (95% confidence interval [95% CI] 0.6, 1.9), 0.15 mg/dl in the serum urate level (95% CI 0.07, 0.24), and 3.2% in the prevalence of hyperuricemia (95% CI 1.2, 5.2). These differences were substantially attenuated after adjusting for body mass index and/or hypertension.These findings from nationally representative samples of US adults suggest that the prevalence of both gout and hyperuricemia remains substantial and may have increased over the past 2 decades, which is likely related to increasing frequencies of adiposity and hypertension.