Serum uric acid and risk of incident diabetes in middle-aged and elderly Chinese adults: prospective cohort study

Abstract

The association between serum uric acid and the risk of incident diabetes in Chinese adults remains unknown. This study aimed to investigate this association in a community-dwelling population aged≥40 years in Shanghai, China. Oral glucose tole3rance test was conducted during baseline and follow-up visits. Relative risk regression was utilized to examine the associations between baseline gender-specific serum uric acid levels and incident diabetes risk. A total of 613 (10.3%) incident diabetes cases were identified during the follow-up visit after 4.5 years. Fasting plasma glucose, postload glucose, and glycated hemoglobin A1c during the follow-up visit progressively increased across the sex-specific quartiles of serum uric acid (all Ps<0.05). The incidence rate of diabetes increased across the quartiles of serum uric acid (7.43%, 8.77%, 11.47%, and 13.43%). Multivariate adjusted regression analysis revealed that individuals in the highest quartile had 1.36-fold increased risk of diabetes compared with those in the lowest quartile of serum uric acid (odds ratio (95% confidence interval) = 1.36 (1.06−1.73)). Stratified analysis indicated that the association was only observed in women. Accordingly, serum uric acid was associated with the increased risk of incident diabetes among middle-aged and elderly Chinese women.

Keywords

incident diabetes / prospective study / uric acid

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the field working staff for their contribution and the participants for their cooperation. This study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (Nos. 2016YFC1305202 and 2016YFC1304904) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81670795 and 81870604). Yuhong Chen was supported by the Shanghai Shenkang Hospital Development Center for improving the control of type 2 diabetes in the suburbs of Shanghai (No. 16CR4020A).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Di Cheng, Chunyan Hu, Rui Du, Hongyan Qi, Lin Lin, Xueyan Wu, Lina Ma, Kui Peng, Mian Li, Min Xu, Yu Xu, Yufang Bi, Weiqing Wang, Yuhong Chen, and Jieli Lu declare that they have no conflict of interest. All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Board of Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11684-019-0723-7 and is accessible for authorized users.

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