Conference Coverage
Primary care gout patients often discontinue allopurinol
Key clinical point: A majority of newly diagnosed gout patients in the U.K.
MADRID – Newly begun allopurinol treatment of elderly patients was linked with a significantly reduced incidence of ventricular arrhythmias in a review of more than 28,000 Medicare beneficiaries.
The antiarrhythmic effect appeared to strengthen with more prolonged allopurinol treatment, reaching a 28% reduction in ventricular arrhythmia incidence among patients on allopurinol for more than 2 years, compared with patients who never received the uric acid reducer, Jasvinder A. Singh, MD, reported in a poster at the European Congress of Rheumatology.
Dr. Jasvinder Singh
He and his associates used data collected from more than 3 million U.S. Medicare beneficiaries during 2006-2012 from a random Medicare 5% sample. This group included 28,755 patients who began a prescription for allopurinol after not having filled a prescription for the drug during the prior 365 days. The patients averaged 77 years of age.
The outcome of interest was a new onset ventricular arrhythmia, defined as an arrhythmia episode in a patient with no prior record of arrhythmia during the previous 365 days. Arrhythmia occurred in 2,538 of the patients on new allopurinol treatment (9%).
In a multivariate analysis that compared new allopurinol users with patients without allopurinol exposure and controlled for several demographic and clinical features, allopurinol use was linked with a statistically significant 18% reduced rate of incident ventricular arrhythmias in those who recieved it, compared with similar patients who did not receive allopurinol, Dr. Singh and his associates reported.
An additional analysis looked at the relative risk reduction associated with various lengths of allopurinol use. Compared with patients not on allopurinol, those taking it for more than 2 years had a significant 28% reduced rate of arrhythmias; those on it for 6 months to 2 years had a significant 24% reduction in incident arrhythmias; and those on it for 1-180 days had no significant change in their arrhythmia incidence.
Other individual factors that significantly correlated with increased ventricular arrhythmias included older age, male sex, African American race, presence of comorbidities, and treatment with a beta-blockers. Like allopurinol, treatment with a statin linked with a significantly reduced arrhythmia incidence.
In a second, related report at the meeting, Dr. Singh and his associates used a very similar data set to see if a link existed between new-onset allopurinol treatment and a reduced incidence of peripheral artery disease. This analysis showed that allopurinol use linked with a statistically significant 12% reduction in new onset peripheral artery disease. They again found that the clinical impact of allopurinol treatment grew larger as the duration of allopurinol treatment increased.
Dr. Singh has financial ties to Allergan, Bioiberica, Crealta, Iroko, Merz, Regeneron, Savient, and Takeda.
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