Prediagnostic Glycoprotein Acetyl Levels and Incident and Recurrent Flare Risk Accounting for Serum Urate Levels: A Population-Based, Prospective Study and Mendelian Randomization Analysis

Abstract

Objective: To prospectively investigate population-based metabolomics for incident gout and reproduce the findings for recurrent flares, accounting for serum urate.

Methods: We conducted a prediagnostic metabolome-wide analysis among 105,615 UK Biobank participants with nuclear magnetic resonance metabolomic profiling data (168 total metabolites) from baseline blood samples collected 2006-2010 in those without history of gout. We calculated hazard ratios (HRs) for incident gout, adjusted for gout risk factors, excluding and including serum urate levels, overall and according to fasting duration before sample collection. Potential causal effects were tested with 2-sample Mendelian randomization. Poisson regression was used to calculate rate ratios (RRs) for the association with recurrent flares among incident gout cases.

Results: Correcting for multiple testing, 88 metabolites were associated with risk of incident gout (N = 1,303 cases) before serum urate adjustment, including glutamine and glycine (inversely), and lipids, branched-chain amino acids, and most prominently, glycoprotein acetyls (GlycA; P = 9.17 × 10^-32 ). Only GlycA remained associated with incident gout following urate adjustment (HR 1.52 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.22-1.88] between extreme quintiles); the HR increased progressively with fasting duration before sample collection, reaching 4.01 (95% CI 1.36-11.82) for ≥8 hours of fasting. Corresponding HRs per SD change in GlycA levels were 1.10 (95% CI 1.04-1.17) overall and 1.54 (95% CI 1.21-1.96) for ≥8 hours of fasting. GlycA levels were also associated with recurrent gout flares among incident gout cases (RR 1.90 [95% CI 1.27-2.85] between extreme quintiles) with larger associations with fasting. Mendelian randomization corroborated a potential causal role for GlycA on gout risk.

Conclusion: This prospective, population-based study implicates GlycA, a stable long-term biomarker reflecting neutrophil overactivity, in incident and recurrent gout flares (central manifestation from neutrophilic synovitis) beyond serum urate.