National-level health data sets were examined to determine the prevalence of gout in the entire Aotearoa New Zealand population. Hospitalisation and drug dispensing claims for allopurinol and colchicine were obtained from the Aotearoa New Zealand Health Tracker (ANZHT) to estimate the prevalence of gout in 2009, stratified by age, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status (n=4,295,296), then compared with data from an independent large primary care data set (HealthStat, n=555,313). The all-ages crude prevalence of diagnosed gout in the ANZHT population was 2.69%. Similarly, the prevalence was 2.89% in the HealthStat population after standardising the data to the ANZHT population for age, gender, ethnicity and deprivation. The ANZHT data revealed that gout occurred more frequently in Māori and Pacific people (relative risk [RR] 3.11 and 3.59, respectively), in males (RR 3.58), in those living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas (RR 1.41) and in those aged >65 years (RR >40; p-value for all <0.0001). Notably, >25% of elderly Māori and Pacific men with diagnosed with gout.
