Introduction: Serum uric acid (UA) to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) ratio (UHR) has recently been introduced as a novel indicator of inflammation. However, no reviews have summarized the applications of UHR. We conducted an overview to summarize and assess the current literature to evaluate UHR's clinical findings in cardio-metabolic and cardiovascular disorders.
Methods: The PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science databases were searched for relevant articles pertaining to adults (age ≥18) up to December 2023. The search terms used were “uric acid” OR “serum uric acid” OR “serum UA” AND “high density lipoprotein” OR “high density lipoprotein cholesterol” OR “HDL” OR “HDL-C” OR “HDL-cholesterol. The final articles were imported to SCImago Graphica and VOSviewer visualization software for bibliometric analysis.
Results: A total of 27 eligible studies were included. The diseases in which UHR was evaluated include non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), diabetes mellitus (DM) and insulin resistance (IR), hypertension (HTN), and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). We summarized the various attributes of UHR concerning these diseases, highlighting promising findings and limitations. The bibliometric analysis revealed that the disorder most frequently investigated was DM and IR (33.33%), followed by CVDs (29.62%) and NAFLD (22.22%). Most participants in the studies were from China. Asia and Europe produced the highest number of publications, with both China and Turkey contributing 11 publications each.
Conclusion: It appears that the UHR, as an underutilized marker, is associated with cardio-metabolic disorders and CVDs. However, further investigations are requisite to ascertain the UHR prognostic significance for these conditions.