Hyperuricemia and the Prognosis of Hypertensive Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The aim of this study was to assess the prognostic value of hyperuricemia in patients with established hypertension by systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. MEDLINE, Embase, and the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database were searched through January 2015. Seventeen cohort studies were included and their methodological quality was moderate to high, with Newcastle-Ottawa Scale scores ranging from 6 to 9. Random-effects model meta-analyses showed that in terms of adjusted categorical data, hyperuricemia significantly correlated with cardiovascular diseases in hypertensive patients (hazard ratio [HR], 1.51; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.13-2.03), all-cause mortality (HR, 1.12; 95%CI, 1.02-1.23), and diabetes (HR, 1.84; 95% CI, 1.02-3.30) but not with stroke (HR, 0.85; 95%CI, 0.57-1.27); while, in terms of adjusted continuous data, the corresponding pooled HRs were 1.17 (95% CI, 1.07-1.27), 1.05 (95% CI, 0.98-1.13), 1.28 (95% CI, 1.18-1.38), and 1.06 (95% CI, 0.98-1.16), respectively. The findings of our meta-analysis suggest that hyperuricemia could slightly increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes in patients with hypertension.