Credit: Original article published here.
Several studies have investigated the association between gout and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), but the findings have been inconclusive. Scientific Reports published a longitudinal follow-up study that identified a correlation between AD and PD in individuals aged <60 years with gout.
“To date, no clear conclusion on the relationships of gout with the occurrence of typical neurodegenerative diseases, AD and PD, has been reached,” the authors of the study remarked. “This study aimed to determine whether the patients with gout are at a lower or higher probability of developing AD or PD than those without gout.”
The study comprised 18,079 individuals diagnosed with gout between 2003 and 2015 and a control cohort of 72,316 demographics-matched individuals. The associations between gout and AD or PD were estimated using Cox proportional hazard ratios (HRs).
The results of the study indicated that the adjusted HRs of AD and PD in the gout cohort were 1.01 and 1.16 times higher than those in the control cohort, respectively; however, these results were not considered to be statistically significant. While the researchers were unable to find a significant association in the entire sample, “AD and PD probabilities in patients with gout were significantly higher in participants <60 years, and PD probabilities in patients with gout were significantly higher in overweight participants.”
These findings suggest that gout may play a role in the development of neurodegenerative diseases in younger or overweight populations. However, the study has some limitations, which include the lack of information on lifestyle factors that may also influence the risk of AD and PD, and the database nature of the study that may have resulted in inaccuracy of diagnoses.
“In this large population-based study, we did not find any significant associations of gout with the 2 neurodegenerative diseases (AD and PD) after adjustment for not only age, sex, monthly income, and residential area but also body mass index, lifestyle factors, metabolic syndrome-related risk factors, and comorbidities,” the researchers noted. “The probabilities of AD and PD were only significantly higher in the gout group compared to the comparison group among individuals under the age of 60 years.”
