Abstract
BackgroundThough gout is more prevalent in men than women, it remains unclear whether gender influences risk factors for incident gout. We aimed to systematically review all cohort studies examining risk factors for the development of gout by gender.MethodsMEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL and the Cochrane Library were searched from inception to March 2019. Risk factors for gout examined were: age, ethnicity, consumption of alcohol, meat, seafood, dairy products, purine-rich vegetables, coffee and fructose, vitamin C intake, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, metabolic syndrome, BMI, waist and chest circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, weight change, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidaemias, renal disease, psoriasis, hypertension, diuretic use and anti-diabetic medication. Cohort studies were included if examining (at least) one of these risk factors for gout in either gender in the general population or primary care. Sample characteristics from included articles and their reported risk estimates were described using narrative synthesis.ResultsThirty-three articles were included, 20 (60.6%)directly compared risk factors by gender, 10 (30.3%) used men-only samples, 3 (9.1%) used women-only samples. Articles comparing risk across genders found similar increases in most risk factors. However, in men, metabolic syndrome (Hazard Ratio (95% CI) 1.37(1.20–1.58)) presented a risk of incident gout compared to none in women (> 50 years 1.15(0.85–1.54); ≤50 years 1.29(0.76–2.17)). Compared to men, women showed greater associated risk with higher consumption of fish and shellfish (HR (95% CI) Men: 1.02 (0.86–1.22); Women 1.36 (1.12–1.65)).ConclusionsRisk factors for developing gout did not typically differ between genders and therefore similar preventative advice can be provided. Exceptions were metabolic syndrome in men and excessive seafood consumption in women, but these singular articles need further examination and in general more research into the risk factors for gout which includes women is required.
Highlights
Gout is the most common inflammatory arthritis, with an increasing prevalence and incidence in recent decades [1]
Age as a risk factor was examined in four articles [6,7,8,9], ethnicity in two [10, 11], dietary risk factors in 16 articles [6,7,8,9, 12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23], comorbidities and metabolic disorders in 13 [6,7,8,9, 24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32] and medication use in seven [6, 26,27,28, 33,34,35]
We found that the risk of developing gout was influenced by many demographic, dietary, comorbid and pharmacological risk factors, and for many of these risk factors, risk was similar for men and women
Summary
Gout is the most common inflammatory arthritis, with an increasing prevalence and incidence in recent decades [1]. Gout is more common in men than women, with only 5.1% of the US gout population being female [2, 3]. This has typically resulted in the examination of risk factors. The. Evans et al Advances in Rheumatology (2019) 59:24 aim of this systematic review was to compare the magnitude of risk conferred by predisposing and protective factors for gout between men and women. Though gout is more prevalent in men than women, it remains unclear whether gender influences risk factors for incident gout. We aimed to systematically review all cohort studies examining risk factors for the development of gout by gender
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