What is gout?. Gout is a rheumatic and painful condition that results from uric acid crystals depositing in the joints. This allows you to get sudden attacks of joint inflammations.
What Causes Gout Disease?
The increased uric acid level is caused by your body producing or supplying too much uric acid, or discharging too little uric acid. It is not yet clear why someone gets or does not get gout.
Your body makes too much uric acid or too much uric acid by:
- congenital abnormalities in production (this is rare)
- psoriasis
- cancer
- chemotherapy
- overweight
- alcohol consumption
- protein-rich diet
Signs And Symptoms of Gout
One of the main complaints with gout is joint inflammation. These are severe and painful. The joint is swollen, red and warm. These joint inflammations in gout come in attacks and can be triggered by alcohol consumption or water pills. An attack of gout is very painful and sometimes goes together with fever.
Notorious is the inflammation of the big toe. Furthermore, the uric acid crystals can precipitate in the skin. You will then receive so-called gout nodules. These are often on the elbows, fingers, toes and on the outer edge of the ear.
A first attack of gout often turns into a chronic form. With chronic gout the inflammations occur more often and in several joints. With an initial gout attack, you suffer from acute joint inflammation.
You have chronic gout if:
-you have three or more attacks per year
-you have gout lumps
-your joints are damaged by the gout
Diagnosis
We can determine gout with a joint function. We then suck up some synovial fluid through a needle. In the absorbed synovial fluid we can see uric acid crystals under gout under the microscope.
The doctor can also do blood tests with you. The uric acid may be elevated with gout, but in case of an attack the uric acid is often reduced. Therefore, the diagnosis of gout can never be assessed solely with a blood test.
Treatment For Gout Pain
- On the advice of your doctor, you can use anti-inflammatory painkillers (NSAIDs) or colchicine for acute gout.
- Chronic gout can be treated with uric acid-lowering therapy. These are medicines that reduce the concentration of uric acid in your blood. You must use these medicines for a long time, often throughout your life.
Besides medication, we give advice about your lifestyle. For example about:
- diet
- reduction of alcohol consumption
- to lose weight