In a recent study published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine, researchers found that extreme values of serum uric acid (SUA) levels in the blood can reduce a patient’s chance of surviving and reduce their lifespans by up to 11 years.
The research was from the University of Limerick. One author is Dr. Leonard Browne, Ph.D.
Uric acid is a by-product of the body’s metabolism and is linked to conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, kidney disease, and gout.
The key question was to determine whether SUA, a routinely measured blood marker, could help us predict a patient’s lifespan, all else being equal.
In the study, the team used data from the National Kidney Disease Surveillance System (NKDSS), based at UL, and created a large cohort of 26,525 patients.
They found for men, the message was quite clear.
The survival was reduced by an average of 9.5 years for men with low levels of SUA (less than 238μmol/L), and 11.7 years for men with high SUA levels (greater than 535 μmol/L) compared to patients with levels of 357-416 μmol/L.
Similarly, for women, the team found that the survival was reduced by almost 6 years for those with SUA levels greater than 416 μmol/L, compared to women with SUA in the normal range.
In addition, the shape of the mortality curves was quite different for men and women.
For men, the shape of the association was predominantly U-shaped with optimal survival between 304-454 μmol/L, whereas, for women, the pattern of linked to J-shaped with an elevated risk of mortality only present for women with SUA levels beyond 409 μmol/L.
The team says high levels of SUA are linked to a range of serious chronic medical conditions such as kidney failure, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
These known associations might explain the high mortality that we observed for patients with elevated SUA levels in this study.
On the other hand, and quite surprisingly, the team also found that very low levels of SUA were also linked to a higher risk of death primarily in men.
This would, of course, suggest that very low levels of SUA are also detrimental to survival.
Interestingly, men who died with low SUA levels had a higher proportion of deaths from cancer—unlike those with high SUA levels who had a higher proportion of deaths from heart disease.
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