Gout and Coffee Consumption Study

Gout is a common arthritis that results from hyperuricemia due to environmental and genetic factors. A recent study suggests that coffee consumption can causally reduce gout risk. The study findings were published in the American College of Rheumatology on 29 March 2022.

The effects of coffee consumption on serum uric acid (SUA) levels and gout risk are controversial. There have been no reports on Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis that investigate the association between coffee consumption and gout susceptibility while taking pleiotropy into account. Therefore, Dr. Hirotaka Matsuo and his team conducted a study to evaluate the effects of coffee consumption across ancestry populations, taking pleiotropy into account.

The researchers conducted a first MR analyses for coffee consumption on SUA levels and gout, considering pleiotropy. They used the following summary statistics of genome-wide association studies from a Japanese population: habitual coffee consumption (152,634 subjects), gout (3053 cases and 4554 controls), and SUA levels (121,745 subjects). In addition to fixed-effect inverse variance weighted (IVW) meta-analysis, they performed a robust evaluation of heterogeneity and removed several instruments for reasons of possible pleiotropy. They also re-evaluated previous European datasets by considering heterogeneity.

Key Findings of the Day:

• Habitual coffee consumption was significantly and inversely associated with gout (odds ratio [OR] = 0.29) in random-effect IVW (P_het = 5.5 × 10⁻¹⁹).
• Upon excluding pleiotropic instruments, they noted that the analysis of the remaining instruments also supported the findings that coffee was inversely associated with gout (OR = 0.75) without heterogeneity (P_het = 0.39).
• They further observed no significant differences between coffee consumption and SUA levels regarding ancestry (P_het = 2.0 × 10⁻¹⁶ in Japanese and P_het = 6.8 × 10⁻⁸ in Europeans).
• Upon multivariable MR analysis, they further confirmed that increased coffee consumption significantly reduced gout risk, even after adjusting for SUA levels (OR = 0.50).

The authors concluded, "With pleiotropy taken into account, our MR analyses revealed that coffee consumption can causally reduce gout risk, and that it may reduce gout risk independently of SUA levels. Our study suggests the presence of biological pathways involved in gout pathogenesis other than SUA levels and should contribute to the development of preventive medicine against gout."

For Further Information:

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/acr2.11425

Keywords:

coffee consumption, serum uric acid, Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis, gout risk, pleiotropic effect, habitual coffee intake, heterogeneity, American College of Rheumatology