Serum uric acid is inversely proportional to estimated stroke volume and cardiac output in a large sample of pharmacologically untreated subjects: data from the Brisighella Heart Study

Serum uric acid is representative for xanthine-oxidase, the key enzyme involved in the production of uric acid, which is up-regulated in the failing heart, and may play an important role in the pathophysiologic process that leads to heart failure. In our study, we investigated the relation between stroke volume, cardiac output and serum uric acid in a large sample of overall healthy pharmacologically untreated subjects. The Brisighella Heart Study included 2,939 men and women between the ages of 14-84 without prior coronary heart disease or cerebrovascular disease who were not taking antihypertensive therapy at baseline. For this study, we selected 734 adult subjects enrolled in the last Brisighella population survey not taking antihypertensive, antidiabetic, lipid-lowering and uric acid-lowering drugs, and who were also not affected by chronic heart failure or by gout. The main predictors of cardiac functionality parameters were mean arterial pressure (MAP), HR, SUA and age (all p < 0.001), while gender, BMI, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, fasting plasma glucose, creatinine, estimated glomerular filtration rate, physical activity and smoking habit were not significantly associated (all p > 0.05). In particular, there is a strong relation between estimated cardiac output and serum uric acid (B = -0.219, p < 0.001) and between stroke volume and serum uric acid (B = -3.684, p < 0.001). These observations might have an impact on future considerations about serum uric acid as an early inexpensive marker of heart function decline in the general population.