Gout may increase the risk for diabetes, according to a recent study.

Although previous research has suggested this link, the findings were restricted to one study of men at high risk of heart disease and stroke. The researchers wanted to know if the link existed in the general population, and also applied to women.

For the study, the research team searched the Health Improvement Network (THIN), an electronic database of health records of almost 7.5 million patients registered with 477 general practices across the United Kingdom.

They included adults who were at least 20 years old, and whose details had been entered into the database for at least a year. The study period ran from Jan.1995 to May 2010.

Each of the 35,339 cases of newly diagnosed gout was compared with up to five people who did not have gout, but who had been enrolled into the database at the same time, adding up to 137,056 in total.

People in the comparison group were of the same gender, age, and weight (BMI) as obesity is a strong risk factor for both gout and type 2 diabetes.

The THIN database also included information on other potentially influential risk factors, such as alcohol consumption, smoking, GP visits, plus other underlying health problems and their treatment.

The new case rate for diabetes was significantly higher among people with gout (9.6/1000 person years) than it was among the comparison group (6.7/1000 patient years).

But although the risk factors were more numerous in men, women had a higher case rate for diabetes: 10.1/1000 person years compared with 9.5/1000 person years. And this difference was evident across all age groups. This compares with equivalent figures of 5.6 for women and 7.2 for men per 1000 person years for the comparison group.

Researchers also found that women were 71 percent more likely to develop diabetes if they had gout, whereas men were 22 percent more likely to do so.

This is an observational study so no definitive conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, but this is the first study to show that there is a link between gout and diabetes in the general UK population, explain the authors.

The ongoing low level inflammation typical of gout may promote the development of diabetes, they suggest. Alternatively, the risk factors the two conditions share in common may help to explain the link.

The findings were published in the British Medical Journal.