Association of walking volume and intensity with incident gout: a population-based cohort study.
Wu Z., Hu Y., He H., Zhang Y., Dalbeth N., Xie J., Wang Y., Zeng C., Lei G., Wei J.
Previous studies have reported that walking is associated with a lower risk of several metabolic diseases; however, evidence of its association with gout, a metabolic condition, is lacking. We conducted cohort studies using data from the UK Biobank (2013-2021) to examine the relationship of walking volume and intensity with the risk of incident gout. We included 92,066 participants who were free of gout and had valid baseline 7-day accelerometer data, which allowed us to derive walking volume (total steps), walking intensity (peak 30-minute cadence), and their combination (purposeful steps). Hazard ratios (HRs) for incident gout were estimated across different walking activity metrics groups using Cox proportional hazard models. During a mean follow-up period of 6.93 years, 706 participants developed incident gout. Walking volume and intensity alone showed no significant relationship to the risk of incident gout. However, compared with the low group (<5,000 steps/day) of purposeful steps, the risk of incident gout was lower in the middle group (5,000-7,999 steps/day) and high (≥8,000 steps/day) group, with adjusted HRs and 95% confidence intervals of 0.78 (0.66-0.94) and 0.72 (0.58-0.90), respectively (P for trend =0.003). These findings offer valuable insights for developing walking-based recommendations to prevent incident gout.