High-level Exposure of Uric Acid in Asymptomatic Hyperuricemia Could Be An Isolated Risk Factors of Cardio-Cerebrovascular Diseases: A Prospective Cohort Study

Background: Whether the asymptomatic hyperuricemia (AH) raises the risk of cardiovascular disease with or without hyperuricemia-related comorbidities still remains contentious. Our study was aimed to quantitatively access the incidence risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke associated with AH.Methods: Multivariate-adjusted Cox regression models were applied to evaluate the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Serum uric acid beyond normouricemia was quarterly stratified based on the distribution of healthy population without CVD onset.Results: 1,062 CVD first attack cases were collected among the 48,001 cohort participants (age range: 18-92, mean age: 47.2±13.9 years-old) with a mean follow-up duration of 5.78±0.83 years. 14,464 baseline population with comorbidities were excluded to further study the association between AH and CVD incidence. The AH showed overall non-association with CVD incident. However, significantly increased adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of CVD with 95% confidence interval (CI) were observed when the fourth quartile compared with normouricemia stratum in the total cohort population (CHD: 1.70, 1.34-2.16; stroke: 1.55, 1.13-2.13), male (CHD: 1.94, 1.47-2.56), female (CHD: 1.71, 1.03-2.35; stroke: 2.02, 1.14-3.58) and aged over 50 years-old population. Meanwhile, the age-standardized incidence rate of CVD in the fourth quartile was 2 to 3 time higher than the normouricemia population. Consistent results were also observed in the AH population in absence of comorbidities (CHD: 2.40, 1.39-4.14; stroke: 1.85, 1.12-3.59).Conclusion: Asymptomatic hyperuricemia patients exposed to higher level of uric acid (male>487 mmol/L, female>422 mmol/L) could significantly increase the incidence risk of CHD and stroke, with or without hyperuricemia-related comorbidities.