Study Unveils Comorbidities and Gender Disparities in Gout Patients

Historically, gout has been considered a male-dominant disease, leading to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the impact of gout on women. A study in RMD Open sought to rectify that. “Gout in women has received less attention in the published literature and is notably under-represented in phenotype evaluation studies and clinical trials,” the authors wrote.

The objective of the observational, multicenter, cross-sectional study was to investigate differences in the occurrence of coexisting medical conditions among female and male patients admitted to Spanish hospitals with gout, with specific emphasis on elucidating the attributes of women diagnosed with gout. Additionally, the researchers noted that they “evaluated the strength of association between each comorbidity and sex and constructed an automatic algorithm to predict the sex of patients with gout based only on age and comorbidities.”

The study analyzed the minimum basic data set from 192,037 hospitalizations of individuals with gout in public and private hospitals between 2005 and 2015. The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision coding system was used for identifying gout cases and comorbidities. Multivariable logistic regression was used to assess the association between each comorbidity and sex.

The study revealed several notable gender differences among patients hospitalized with gout. Women constituted 17.4% of the sample and were significantly older than men, with an average age of 73.9 years compared with 64.0 years for men. The analysis showed that women with gout exhibited a higher prevalence of certain comorbidities compared with men, including obesity, dyslipidemia, chronic kidney disease, diabetes mellitus, heart failure, dementia, urinary tract infection (UTI), and concurrent rheumatic diseases.

Moreover, the research suggested a significant correlation between being female and advancing age, heart failure, obesity, UTI, and diabetes mellitus. In contrast, male sex was associated with obstructive respiratory diseases, coronary disease, and peripheral vascular disease. The constructed decision tree algorithm accurately predicted the sex of patients with gout based on age and comorbidities alone, achieving an accuracy of 74.4%.

Addressing gender blindness in gout research is crucial for developing targeted interventions and ensuring equitable healthcare for all individuals with gout. According to the authors, “The relationship between sex and comorbidities in gout described here should directly concern general practitioners, rheumatologists, and other specialists attending patients with gout. Clinicians should be aware of the role of sex as a primary, direct indicator of accompanying diseases.”

Source: RMD Open