There are SQL statement generation classes out that allow you to specify the types of variables before they are bound. Under the covers things that are noted as ints are cats to ints (for example, http://php.net/manual/en/mysqli-stmt.bind-param.php).

If this is really a comment on the Elgg_Database_Driver::UINT, then I agree - just trying to maintain the current API.

Regardless, I'm looking at zf2's db classes now.