Gout is the most common inflammatory arthritis. Erectile dysfunction (ED) is common in the general population; however, evidence regarding ED among patients with gout is limited. Our purpose was to study the association between incident gout and the risk of incident ED in the general population.
We conducted a cohort study using The Health Improvement Network, an electronic medical record database in the United Kingdom. Up to 5 individuals without gout were matched to each case of incident gout by age, enrollment time, and body mass index (BMI). Multivariate HR for ED were calculated after adjusting for smoking, alcohol consumption, comorbidities, and medication use.
We identified 2290 new cases of ED among 38,438 patients with gout (mean age 63.6 yrs) and 8447 cases among 154,332 individuals in the comparison cohort over a 5-year median followup (11.9 vs 10.5 per 1000 person-years, respectively). Univariate (matched for age, entry time, and BMI) and multivariate HR for ED among patients with gout were 1.13 (95% CI 1.08-1.19) and 1.15 (95% CI 1.09-1.21), respectively. In our sensitivity analysis, by restricting gout cases to those receiving anti-gout treatment (n = 27,718), the magnitude of relative risk was stronger than the primary analysis (multivariate HR 1.31, 95% CI 1.23-1.39).
This population-based study suggests that gout is associated with an increased risk of developing ED, supporting a possible role for hyperuricemia and inflammation as independent risk factors for ED.