| Characteristics | Subjects with gout (n = 1558–1581) | Subjects without gout (n = 64 553–69 410)† | p Value* |
| Age (years), mean (SD) | 68 (11) | 61 (15) | <0.001 |
| Male | 99 | 96 | <0.001 |
| White | 97 | 95 | <0.001 |
| Married | 36 | 44 | <0.001 |
| Currently smoke | 15 | 24 | <0.001 |
| Employment status | <0.001 | ||
| Employed | 25 | 34 | |
| Unemployed | 16 | 23 | |
| Retired | 56 | 36 | |
| Unknown | 3 | 7 | |
| Education level | <0.001 | ||
| <8th Grade | 3 | 4 | |
| Some high school | 25 | 34 | |
| High school graduate | 36 | 36 | |
| College and beyond | 36 | 27 | |
| Number of medical comorbidities, mean (SD)‡ | 1.5 (1.1) | 0.8 (1.0) | <0.001 |
| Number of arthritic comorbidities, mean (SD)§ | 0.6 (0.9) | 0.2 (0.6) | <0.001 |
Results are shown as percentages unless stated otherwise.
*p Values denote comparisons between subjects with and without gout (all three survey-derived measures); †data were available on the entire sample with the following exceptions: race data were available for 40 790 subjects without gout and 1164 with gout, current smoking status (from survey data) was available for 35 985 subjects without gout and 993 with gout, education status was available for 38 236 subjects without gout and 1061 with gout; ‡medical comorbidity was a sum of five comorbidities, including diabetes, depression, hypertension, heart disease and asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; §arthritic comorbidity was a sum of nine arthritic conditions other than gout: osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthropathies, crystal-associated arthritis except gout, unspecified arthritis, infectious arthritis, arthritis associated with haemachromatosis, arthritis associated with endocrine or metabolic diseases and spondylosis.