Adding Hyperuricemia to Traditional Cardiac Risk Factors Does Not Improve Ability to Predict Cardiac or Total Death in the Asymptomatic Taiwanese General Population

Background: Although hyperuricemia is associated with cardiovascular disease, such as coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke and hypertension, whether or not including it among traditional risk factors improves the ability to better predict cardiac mortality and total cause of death rates remains controversial. Methods and Results: This was an observational study based on 57,100 participants without overt cardiovascular disease who were enrolled during routine health examinations at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. The participants’mean age was 52.3 ± 13.4 years. Researchers estimated their serum concentrations of uric acid, and the study used future cardiac and all-cause death as the primary endpoints. During an average follow-up period of 5.4 ± 3.0 years, there were 1,889 deaths, including 231 cardiac deaths among the study subjects. In a multivariable-adjusted analysis with traditional cardiovascular risk factors, the hazard ratio of cardiac death associated with hyperuricemia was 1.63 (95% confidence inter