Genetically determined uric acid and the risk of cardiovascular and neurovascular diseases: a mendelian randomization study of outcomes investigated in randomized trials.
File(s)JAHA.119.012738.pdf (2.79 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Efstathiadou, Anthoula
Gill, Dipender
McGrane, Frances
Quinn, Terence
Dawson, Jesse
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background Higher serum uric acid levels are associated with cardiovascular and neurovascular disease, but whether these relationships are causal is not known. We applied Mendelian randomization approaches to assess the association between genetically determined uric acid levels and outcomes under study in large clinical trials. Methods and Results We used 28 genetic variants related to serum uric acid as instruments to perform a range of 2-sample Mendelian randomization methods. Our analysis had statistical power to detect clinically relevant effects of genetically determined serum uric acid levels on the considered clinical outcomes; cognitive function, Alzheimer disease, coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, systolic blood pressure, and stroke. There was some suggestive evidence for an association between higher genetically determined serum uric acid and cognitive function. There was also some suggestive evidence of a relationship between coronary heart disease, systolic blood pressure, and the serum uric acid genetic instruments, but likely related to genetic pleiotropy. Overall, there was no consistent evidence of a clinically relevant effect of genetically determined serum uric acid on any of the considered outcomes. Conclusions This Mendelian randomization study does not support a clinically relevant causal effect of genetically determined serum urate on a range of cardiovascular and neurovascular outcomes. The weak association of genetically determined serum urate with coronary heart disease and systolic blood pressure may be because of pleiotropic effects. If urate lowering drugs such as allopurinol are found to affect these outcomes in clinical trials, then the effects may be mediated through urate independent mechanisms.
Date Issued
2019-09-03
Date Acceptance
2019-07-12
Citation
Journal of the American Heart Association : Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Disease, 2019, 8 (17), pp.1-55
ISSN
2047-9980
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
1
End Page
55
Journal / Book Title
Journal of the American Heart Association : Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Disease
Volume
8
Issue
17
Copyright Statement
© 2019 The Authors. Published on behalf of the American Heart Association, Inc., by Wiley Blackwell
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31438759
Subjects
Mendelian randomization
neurovascular disease
uric acid
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Date Publish Online
2019-08-23