High Level of Serum Uric Acid induced Monocyte Inflammation is Related to Coronary Calcium Deposition in the Middle-Aged and Elder Population of China: A five-year Prospective Cohort Study

Xiaojun Wang; Xuanqi Liu; Yiding Qi; Shuyi Zhang; Kailei Shi; Huagang Lin; Paul Grossfeld; Wenhao Wang; Tao Wu; Xinkai Qu; Jing Xiao; Maoqing Ye

doi:10.2147/JIR.S353883

High Level of Serum Uric Acid induced Monocyte Inflammation is Related to Coronary Calcium Deposition in the Middle-Aged and Elder Population of China: A five-year Prospective Cohort Study

J Inflamm Res. 2022 Mar 12:15:1859-1872. doi: 10.2147/JIR.S353883. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Xiaojun Wang^#^{1

2}, Xuanqi Liu^#³, Yiding Qi^#⁴, Shuyi Zhang⁴, Kailei Shi⁴, Huagang Lin⁵, Paul Grossfeld⁶, Wenhao Wang^{1

2}, Tao Wu^{1

2}, Xinkai Qu⁴, Jing Xiao⁵, Maoqing Ye^{2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, Shanghai, 200040, People's Republic of China.
² Shanghai Key Laboratory of Clinical Geriatric Medicine, Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, Shanghai, 200040, People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, Shanghai, 200040, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Department of Cardiology, Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, Shanghai, 200040, People's Republic of China.
⁵ Department of Nephrology, Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University, Shanghai, 200040, People's Republic of China.
⁶ Division of Cardiology UCSD School of Medicine, Rady Children's Hospital of San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: Serum uric acid (SUA) is suspected to be associated with atherosclerosis and calcium deposition in atherosclerosis is known to related poor prognosis, yet there is no cohort study on the aged in China. We aimed to investigate the relationships between SUA levels and coronary calcium deposition in the middle-aged and elderly populations in China.

Methods: A total of 326 participants between the ages of 50 and 85 who had undergone a coronary CT scan in 2015 at the Huadong Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University (Shanghai, China) were included in this study. Univariate and multivariate binary logistic regression was performed to analyze the correlation between SUA levels and coronary artery calcium score (CACS). The changes in CACS during a five-year follow-up were analyzed through Kaplan-Meier survival and binary cox regression analysis. An observational study was done on another 104 asymptomatic middle-aged and elderly patients to compare relative mRNA expressions of proinflammatory factors in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 104 subjects.

Results: Based on the first year of follow-up data analysis, the elevation of SUA levels (P<0.001) is an independent risk factor for the increase of CACS after coordinating the confounding factors. According to five-year follow-up data, cox regression analysis proved that SUA was a risk factor for CACS (HR =5.86, P<0.001). The mRNA expression of IL-6 and CXCL8 in the HUA and HUA patients with CAC (HUA-CAC) groups was significantly higher than that in the normal control (NC) and coronary calcium deposition (CAC) groups.

Conclusion: Taken together, the findings in this study indicate that high SUA levels (P<0.001) are an independent risk factor for CACS and elevated SUA levels increase the risk of developing coronary calcium deposition among middle-aged and old people in the Chinese population, which may be related to an increase of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the PBMCs.

Keywords: calcium deposition; coronary artery calcium score; monocyte inflammation; serum uric acid.