Gout Symptoms And Diagnosis

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• Gout Attacks Can Cause Severe Joint Pain
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What is the best thing to drink if you have gout?

Drink plenty of water, milk and tart cherry juice. Drinking coffee seems to help as well. Be sure to talk with your doctor before making any dietary changes.

Gout attacks can often occur in clusters when uric acid levels are persistently elevated . Without medication, acute gout flares can last from hours to weeks. Symptoms can be sudden and severe, causing pain, redness, and swelling in the affected joint, most often the big toe. Attacks occur most frequently at night or in the early morning hours. All protein from animal flesh can potentially lead to elevated uric acid levels.

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Less frequently (1% of cases), patients taking allopurinol can develop severe allopurinol hypersensitivity syndrome, which carries a mortality of 20-30%. Features of this syndrome include fever, toxic epidermal necrolysis, bone marrow suppression, eosinophilia, leukocytosis, kidney failure, liver failure, and vasculitis. Corticosteroids are often used to treat severe allopurinol hypersensitivity syndrome.

Gout Attacks Can Cause Severe Joint Pain

The most common bacteria culprit is Staphylococcus aureus, with the infection commonly known as staph infection. The knee is most often implicated with septic arthritis, making up about 50% of cases. The wrists, ankles, and hips are also commonly affected. Septic arthritis is most common in individuals who have prior joint damage, such as in the case of rheumatoid arthritis. Analysis of the synovial fluid is the most effective diagnostic tool; a high presence of leukocytes and a lack of uric acid crystals indicate a high likelihood of septic arthritis.

Rheumatologists traditionally have expertise in diagnosing and treating gout, especially complicated situations. Other specialists such as internists, general practitioners, family medicine doctors, and orthopedists can manage straightforward cases of gout. Nephrologists may treat patients with uric-acid-lowering medications such as allopurinol in order to prevent damage to the kidneys, which can occur with elevated uric acid levels .

Gout attacks, also called flares, or flare-ups, can come on suddenly and be extremely painful. Gout is caused by having too much uric acid in your blood. Uric acid is made when your body breaks down chemicals called purines.

† These crystals occur primarily in patients with renal failure. Cardiovascular disease, obstructive sleep apnea, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and components of metabolic syndrome are common among patients with gout. The first few flares usually affect only a single joint and last only a few days.

Is gout a serious problem?

Gout is more than just painful flares. If not managed properly, over time gout can cause permanent joint destruction, bone erosion and kidney damage. With advances in treatments and understanding of the disease, gout is a manageable condition and flares can be controlled with the appropriate long-term management.

Pharmacists can appreciate that the optimal treatment for gout requires both adjunctive nonpharmacologic as well as pharmacologic interventional therapies . Foods that have been implicated in causing gout are red-organ meats, seafood, and foods containing high-fructose corn syrup. The presence of guanosine in beer has been identified as the cause of gouty attacks.

Normally, uric acid dissolves in your blood and passes through your kidneys into your urine. In people who have gout, uric acid builds up and forms sharp crystals in the joint space. Stress, poor diet, alcohol use, and other health problems can trigger the attack.

Fortunately, gout attacks can be controlled and treated with medication. Even though most tophi will develop in the big toe, around the fingers, or at the tip of the elbow, tophi nodules can appear practically anywhere in the body. In some cases, they can penetrate the skin and cause crusty, chalk-like nodules.

Pounding on an inflamed gouty joint can prolong the flare. It’s fine to do other kinds of exercise, for example any exercise involving the upper body, but give the gouty joint a rest. This is another reason to treat gout flares quickly, since starting early often means the flare will be short – and you can limit your time off your feet. Doctors can also do a blood test to measure the levels of uric acid in the blood, but, as mentioned, people with high uric acid levels do not always experience gout. Equally, some people can develop the symptoms of gout without having increased levels of uric acid in the blood.

People with sleep apnea experience many small interruptions in breathing while they sleep, and this lowers the level of oxygen in their blood. This is thought to affect a process that elevates the production of uric acid in the body, which raises gout risk. To prevent uric acid stones from gout, doctors commonly prescribe the uric acid-lowering medication allopurinol. In some cases, allopurinol and an alkalizing agent may dissolve the uric acid stones.