Epidemiology and Prevalence of Gout in Mainland China: an Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Gout is a common inflammatory joint disease. Although China is a developing country, it is an ethnically diverse country with regional economic disparities. To date, there are limited studies that investigated the gout prevalence from representative populations in mainland China. Therefore, we performed an updated systematic review and meta-analysis in order to comprehensively review all the relevant published data that reported the prevalence of gout in mainland China from 1998 to 2019. The electronic databases including PubMed and Medline were searched for peer-reviewed articles published in the selected period. Meta-analyses were conducted by using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software. After screening and checking for eligibility, we included 67 articles with a total of > 394,768 participants. The pooled estimate of prevalence in the general population was 1.6% (95% CI, 1.2–2.2%). Gout prevalence rates varied from 0.8 to 5% by regions. The lowest and highest prevalence of gout was found in the Northwest (0.8%) and Southwest (5.0%), respectively. The prevalence rate was higher in males than in females (1.9% (95% CI, 1.5–2.4%) vs. 0.5% (95% CI, 0.3–0.8%) (P < 0.001). All funnel plots were symmetrical and no indication of publication bias was observed for all analyses. In conclusion, the prevalence of gout was reported to be on the rise. In addition, the burden of gout is also increasing in China. With the increasing aging populations and obesity rate in mainland China, the evidence from this updated systematic review and meta-analysis will be significant to prompt for optimizing management and treatment of gout at individual and population levels.