REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Cardiovascular and Smooth Muscle Pharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1565530
Efficacy of different dosages of common uric acid-lowering medications in gout patients: A network meta-analysis of randomized control trials
Provisionally accepted
- Dongzhimen Hospital Affliated to Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Purpose: Urate lowering therapy (ULT) is extensively utilized for managing patients with gout. This study aims to compare the efficacy of different ULTs on serum uric acid (SUC) levels, gout flares, and adverse events (AEs) in gout patients.: Studies comparing the efficacy of febuxostat, allopurinol, benzbromarone, and topixostat with placebo were searched up to March 2024. Stata 15.1 and R software 4.2.3 were employed to rank the efficacy of each ULT.Results: This study included 30 studies, involving 20,040 patients. All ULTs resulted in notably lower SUC levels compared to placebo/no ULT. Febuxostat 120 mg markedly reduced SUC levels compared to allopurinol and benzbromarone 25 mg (mean difference = 2.16, 95% confidence interval [0.27, 4.06], P<0.05). Allopurinol 200/300 mg was the best choice to reduce gout flares. In terms of AEs, the allopurinol group (300 mg) had the lowest incidence of cardiovascular and renal abnormalities. Moreover, the incidence of AEs was observed to rise with increasing doses. Future well-designed randomized control trials are required to further confirm these findings.The study results indicate that febuxostat is the most effective ULT drug to treat gout. It can effectively help gout patients reduce SUC levels. Researchers should pay attention to the safety of drug doses.
Keywords: Gout, common uric acid-lowering medications, dosage, Network meta-analysis, dose-response, RCTs,
Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 30 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zheng, Xie, Fang, Huang, Huang, Zhao, Ye and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hailong Wang, Dongzhimen Hospital Affliated to Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.