Inflammatory arthritis: Gout shows up more in Gadap men over 50 years

Meat-rich diets, high uric acid levels lead to crystal deposits around the joints.

KARACHI: Researchers looking into a patient pool from Gadap have found a high prevalence of gout in men with the highest number of cases over the age of 50 years. Gout is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis in men and is linked to diets rich in meats and seafood.

These findings were published as ‘Prevalence of gout in Gadap Town, Karachi community, Pakistan’ in the August issue of the African Journal of Biotechnology. The study was authored by M. Akram and Khan Usmanghani of the Faculty of Eastern Medicine, Hamdard University, Naveed Akhtar, H. M. Asif, S. M. Ali Shah and Qaiser Jabeen of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Alternative Medicine, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur and  Pervaiz Akhtar Shah and Tariq Saeed of the University College of Pharmacy, University of Punjab

The researchers wanted to find out how many people had gouty arthritis from a pool of 100 patients (both men and women) between the ages of 35 and 70 years. The patients who were randomly picked and lived in Gadap town adjacent to Shifa-ul-Mulk Memorial Hospital, Madinat-al-Hikmah, Hamdard University in Karachi. The average age of the 66 male patients was 53 years and for the 34 female patients 58 years.

Like other parts of the world, gout in Pakistan and India is frequently found in middle-aged men and may lead to deformities and disabilities.

Gout is one of the most common inflammatory arthritis, which is considered to be the result of a crystal deposit disorder caused by the formation of monosodium urate crystals in and around the joints. The good news is that gout is taken as a curable disease.

Although experts have found that people over 65 years old are at risk, men tend to get the disease more.

In the west it is linked to beer drinking.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th, 2011.