Gout: causes, symptoms and treatment

Gout – a disease in which deposits of urate crystals occur in body tissues. Often they are in the form of sodium monourate or uric acid. You can find out the causes of gout, its symptoms and methods of treatment from this article.

Risk groups

To a large extent, gout affects men over the age of 40, and women over 60. Thus, for every 1000 men, on average, gout is found in 30 people. At the same time, this figure among women does not exceed 10 cases per 1000 people. Acute attacks of gout in young people are extremely rare, usually manifested by a defect in uric acid synthesis.

Causes of gout

There are various causes of gout. Doctors call obesity, hypertension, chronic alcohol intoxication and hyperlipidemia the main risk factors for its development. An acute attack of gout can also be caused by:

• an increased content of purine bases in the body, which enter it with excessive consumption of coffee, chocolate, dairy products, fish and seafood, meat;
• an increase in the catabolism of purine nucleotides. Occurs in people with autoimmune diseases;
• slowing the excretion of uric acid, as in kidney failure;
• increased synthesis of uric acid while reducing its excretion from the body. It occurs in people suffering from alcohol dependence.

Symptomatology and diagnosis

There are four stages in the development of gout:

1. Asymptomatic increase in blood uric acid.
2. Acute attack of gouty arthritis.
3. The period between exacerbations.
4. 4. Chronic deposits in the joints.

Starting from the second stage of gout, kidney stones can develop in the body.

In addition, among the symptoms of gout, there are:

• constant increase in the content of uric acid in urine and blood plasma;
• inflammation of the joints accompanied by fever and severe pain;
• pyelonephritis and urolithiasis developing into renal failure.

The most reliable signs in the diagnosis of gout are:

• acute arthritis;
• presence of tophi proven by analysis;
• detection of crystalline urates in the synovial fluid.

There is a special set of signs by which a disease can be identified. They are isolated in the complex diagnosis of gout, based on the results of analyzes of synovial fluid, blood and urine.

Treatment of gout

Treatment of gout during an exacerbation involves hospitalization of the patient with further treatment in the rheumatology department. During remission, treatment can be carried out at home under the supervision of a nephrologist and rheumatologist.

The time of inpatient treatment of gout depends on the selection of adequate therapy. The duration varies from 7 to 14 days.

It provides:

• careful and rapid relief of an acute attack;
• prevention of recurrence of an acute attack;
• prevention of complications and accompanying symptoms;
• Prevention of kidney stones.

Source estet-portal.com