Response to: Relationship between serum uric acid and blood pressure by adjusting dietary factors

To the Editor:

We read with interest the letter in response to our recently published work.1 We thank Dr Kawada for his comments on our analyses of uric acid as a potentially diet‐independent influencing factor of blood pressure (BP) in the German adult population. We are fully in line with Dr. Kawada that multiple factors, including exercise, sleep, and especially diet are related to BP. For this reason, we performed comprehensive data analyses using different statistical models to examine whether uric acid per se, independently of many of the known determinants, is relevant for BP‐variation. Despite this extensive adjustment, explained model variation remained below 0.3, as has been indicated by Dr Kawada. Similar or even lower R²‐values, for example in the recent study of Lee et al2 on the association of uric acid and BP in Korean adults, underline that research is still needed with respect to further determinants of human BP.

In this regard, Dr Kawada particularly mentioned our different sensitivity‐ and subgroup‐analyses performed to specifically check robustness of the uric acid/BP relationship under various conditions, and he points out the “advantage of elucidating the diet‐independent relationship.” We again thank Dr Kawada for this appraisal. Finally, we also agree with his view that the causal mechanism relating uric acid and BP needs to be further explored in more depth.

Conflict of interest

None.