Are polymorphisms affecting serum urate, renal urate handling and alcohol intake associated with co-morbidities in gout cases? A case–control study using data from the UK Biobank

To examine the association between common comorbidities, eGFR and loci involved in the hyperuricaemia-gout transition. This study was conducted in people with gout from the UK Biobank. Logistic regression was used to examine the association between self-reported physician-diagnosed hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia and ischaemic heart disease (IHD) with the following variants: rs1260326(GCKR), rs16890979(SLC2A9), rs2231142(ABCG2), rs1229984(ADH1B) and rs2078267(SLC22A11) and adjusted for age, sex and 10-principal components. Linear regression was used to examine the association with eGFR. 7,049 participants with gout were included. After adjusting for multiple testing, there was a statistically significant positive association between urate lowering allele at SLC2A9 and hypertension, and negative association between urate raising allele at ABCG2 and hypertension (OR 1.17 and OR 0.86, respectively). Number of urate lowering risk alleles associated with hypertension [OR (95%CI) 1.13 (1.06–1.21)]. High eGFR associated with urate raising allele at rs2231142 (β = 1.38). The SNP in ADH1B that protects from alcohol excess showed a negative association with IHD (OR 0.53). Unlike in general population studies urate lowering genetic variants associate with hypertension in gout patients with dose–response. This may be due to high prevalence of other risk factors of hypertension such as obesity, poor diet etc. and needs validation in independent datasets.