Gout was independently associated with a 15% higher risk of incident dementia in the elderly, according to a recent study. Researchers used the 5% Medicare claims data for this observational cohort study. They also used multivariable adjusted Cox proportional hazard models to assess the association of gout with a new diagnosis of dementia (incident dementia), adjusting for potential confounders/covariates including demographics (age, race, sex), comorbidities (Charlson-Romano comorbidity index), and medications commonly used for cardiac diseases and gout. They found:

• In the cohort of 1.71 million Medicare beneficiaries, 111,656 had incident dementia.
• The crude incidence rates of dementia in people without and with gout were 10.9 and 17.9 per 1,000 person-years, respectively.
• In multivariable-adjusted analyses, gout was independently associated with a significantly higher hazard ratio of incident dementia, with a HR of 1.15.
• Compared to age 65 to <75 years, age 75 to < 85 years and ≥ 85 years were associated with 3.5 and 7.8-fold higher hazards of dementia; hazards were also higher for females, blacks, or people with higher medical comorbidity.