OBJECTIVE: Serum uric acid (SUA) levels correlate with many recognized 
cardiovascular risk factors, including age, male sex, hypertension, diabetes 
mellitus, hypertriglyceridemia, obesity, and insulin resistance. The aim of our 
study was to verify in a large well characterized population sample the 
relationship between SUA values, hypertension, arterial stiffness and 
subclinical atherosclerosis.
METHODS: For this study, we selected 248 men and 371 women adult patients 
enrolled in the last Brisighella Heart Study population survey for which a full 
set of data were available and not consuming antihypertensive, antidiabetic, 
lipid-lowering and uric acid-lowering drugs. SUA and other available variables 
were related to blood pressure level, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity 
(cfPWV) and carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT).
RESULTS: Hypertension prevalence was strongly related to SUA quartiles: we found 
significant differences between the 2nd (23.0%) and the 3rd quartiles (36.4%; P 
vs. 2nd < 0.05), and between the 3rd and the 4th quartile (56.3%; P vs. 
3rd < 0.05). Similarly, the metabolic syndrome prevalence increased 
significantly at 39.5% in the 3rd SUA quartile (P < 0.05 vs. 2nd) and at 58.9% 
in the 4th quartile (P < 0.05 vs. 3rd). Intima-media thickness gradually and 
significantly rose along quartiles of SUA (P for trend < 0.0001), in particular, 
it was 0.86  mm in the 1st quartile, 0.90 in the 2nd, 0.94 in the 3rd, and 0.97 
in the last quartile, with significant differences between each quartiles (all 
P < 0.05). In multivariate regression analyses, SUA resulted to be significantly 
associated to hypertension and metabolic syndrome prevalence, and IMT. Even if a 
significant association between SUA and cfPWV was found in univariate analysis 
(P = 0.002), when adjusting for age, the trend became nonsignificant (0.20).
CONCLUSION: In the studied population sample, after adjustment for a large 
number of parameters, SUA appears to be significantly correlated to hypertension 
and IMT, but not to aortic stiffness.