• Wenze Xiao, Qi Wang, Yining Liu, Hui Zhang, and Hejian Zou.
• Department of Rheumatology, Shanghai Pudong Hospital, Fudan University Pudong Medical Center, Shanghai 201399, China.
• Chin. Med. J. 2024 Oct 5; 137 (19): 235123572351-2357.

BackgroundThe causal relationship between visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and gout is still unclear. We aimed to examine the potential association between them using observational and Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses.MethodsIn the observational analyses, a total of 11,967 participants (aged 39.5 ± 11.5 years) were included from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Logistic regression models were used to investigate the association between VAT mass and the risk of gout. In two-sample MR analyses, 211 VAT mass-related independent genetic variants (derived from genome-wide association studies in 325,153 UK biobank participants) were used as instrumental variables. The random-effects inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method was used as the primary analysis. Additional sensitivity analyses were also performed to validate our results.ResultsObservational analyses found that an increase in VAT mass (per standard deviation) was associated with a higher risk of gout after controlling for confounding factors (odds ratio [OR] = 1.27, 95% confidence intervals [CI] = 1.11-1.45). The two-sample MR analyses demonstrated a causal relationship between increased VAT mass and the risk of gout in primary analyses (OR = 1.78, 95% CI = 1.57-2.03). Sensitivity analyses also showed similar findings, including MR-Egger, weighted median, simple mode, weighted mode, and leave-one-out analyses.ConclusionsObservational analyses showed a robust association of VAT mass with the risk of gout. Meanwhile, MR analyses also provided evidence of a causal relationship between them. In summary, our findings suggested that targeted interventions for VAT mass may be beneficial to prevent gout.Copyright © 2024 The Chinese Medical Association, produced by Wolters Kluwer, Inc. under the CC-BY-NC-ND license.

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