Gout is a risk equivalent to diabetes mellitus (DM) for incident stroke but not for incident myocardial infarction (MI), according to a recent study. Having both gout and DM, however, confers incremental risk compared with DM alone for both incident MI and stroke. In this retrospective study, researchers used US claims data from 2007 to 2010 that included a mix of private and public health plans. 4 mutually exclusive cohorts were identified: (1) DM only (n=232,592), (2) gout only (n=71,755), (3) gout and DM (n=23,261), and (4) neither gout nor DM (n=1,010,893). Outcomes were acute MI or stroke with hospitalization. They found:

• The incidence of acute MI was lowest in patients with neither gout nor DM, followed by patients with gout alone, DM alone, and both.
• Among men >80 years of age, the respective rates/1,000 person-years were 14.6, 25.4, 27.7, and 37.4.
• Similar trends were noted for stroke and in women.
• Compared with DM only, gout was associated with a significantly lower adjusted hazard ratio of incident MI but a similar risk of stroke.