To estimate the contemporary prevalences of gout and hyperuricemia and their decadal trends in the US, as well as the prevalence of urate-lowering therapy (ULT) use among gout patients, using data from the latest and prior nationally-representative samples of US men and women (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey [NHANES] 2007–2016).
Using data from 5,467 participants from NHANES 2015–2016, we estimated the latest prevalence of gout and hyperuricemia. During the NHANES, all participants were asked about a history of health professional-diagnosed gout and medication use. Hyperuricemia was defined as a serum urate level >7.0 mg/dL in men and >5.7 mg/dL in women. We examined decadal trends in these estimates using data from the NHANES 2007–2016 and ULT usage trends using the NHANES 2007–14 (the latest data available to date).
The prevalence of gout was 3.9% (9.2 million) among US adults in 2015–2016 (5.2% [5.9 million] and 2.7% [3.3 million] among men and women, respectively). Mean serum urate levels were 6.0 mg/dL among men and 4.8 mg/dL among women, with hyperuricemia prevalences of 20.2% and 20.0%, respectively. The prevalences of gout and hyperuricemia remained stable over the past decade (P for trend >0.05). The prevalence of ULT use among patients with gout was 33% during 2007–2014 and remained stable over time (P for trend >0.05).