Association of serum uric acid to lymphocyte ratio, a novel inflammatory biomarker, with risk of stroke: A prospective cohort study

MAIN PROBLEM: Inflammation plays an important role in the pathological progress associated with stroke. Serum uric acid (SUA) to lymphocyte ratio (ULR), a novel inflammatory biomarker, has been considered as a better risk stratification tool of adverse outcomes than SUA or lymphocyte alone. This study aimed to investigate whether ULR produced more predictive value for stroke and explore the potential mediators of the associations. METHODS: This study enrolled 93,023 Chinese participants without stroke and myocardial infarction at baseline. Cox proportional hazard models were used to analyze the associations of ULR with stroke and subtypes. Mediation analyses were conducted to explore potential mediators of the associations. RESULTS: During a median follow‐up of 13.00 years, 6081 cases of incident stroke occurred, including 5048 cases of ischemic stroke (IS) and 900 cases of hemorrhagic stroke (HS). After adjustment for confounders, the Q4 group was associated with a higher risk of HS (HR, 1.25; 95% CI, 1.03–1.50), but not with total stroke (HR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.03–1.13) or IS (HR, 1.04; 95% CI, 0.97–1.12). No significant associations were found between SUA or lymphocyte and any stroke. ULR outperformed SUA or lymphocytes alone in predicting stroke. Additionally, the significant association between ULR and HS was partially mediated by systolic blood pressure (20.32%), diastolic blood pressure (11.18%) and estimated glomerular filtration rate (9.19%). CONCLUSIONS: ULR was significantly associated with the risk of HS, but not with IS. Systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and estimated glomerular filtration rate were potential mediators for the association.