Gout

Earlier education, better understanding of pain guidelines, and better agreement among those guidelines are needed to prevent significant disparities in how certain types of pain are treated.

Researchers report that tailored, computer-based training and interventions can increase the effectiveness of health promotion programs for many workplaces.

Gout, a complex type of arthritis, has its own set of challenges. From expensive flare-ups to food-triggering pain, new insight on the disease is always welcomed. Now, researchers have identified a group of patients who could be more likely to developing gout.

The indirect costs of gout can be as much as $18,362 per patient each year, research shows.

Chronic consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages leads to increased BMI and gout risk, study shows.

Ultrasound may be an excellent diagnosis tool for gout, if doctors can agree on what they are looking at.

Gout is on the rise globally. A Brazilian researcher who surveyed that nation's rheumatologists found some are ignoring--or unaware of--guidelines on how to treat the ailment.

Sugar-sweetened beverages (SBB) can do more than increase belly fat and send your body on a rollercoaster, it can elevate serum urate levels which increases the risk of gout. Researchers from New Zealand recently looked at how body mass index (BMI) plays a role in the SBB and gout relationship.

Gout has been making quite a stir in news recently. Between a new classification system and a study showing that a common food can cause painful flares, this form of arthritis is getting quite a bit of attention. Now comes word that a drug used to treat gout could also be effective for another damaging condition.

Research shows a possible biological basis between gout, tomatoes and other foods.

Stress on joints appears to have no effect on urate deposition.

A new evidence-based classification system for gout has been shown to outperform the current gold standard, which could lead to an updated protocol.

November may be peak season for gout flares, researchers at the Reading Health System in Reading, Penn., and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis reported in the August issue of Clinical Rheumatology.

The connection between diabetes and gout is more complicated than thought. Individuals with type 2 diabetes are at increased risk of developing gout, but not because they have diabetes.

In autoimmune diseases, one size doesn't fit all when it comes to tools to encourage adherence to treatment..

It has long been suspected that some foods and lifestyle factors can cause painful acute gout attacks. Now, for the first time, researchers have shown that eating tomatoes contributes to the flares.

The number of opioid-related deaths nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2011 in the US; and while that number continues to increase, one state has made positive strides with the implementation of two initiatives.

Patients with tophaceous gout rarely develop ulcers, but when they do occur, these ulcers can be difficult to treat. This case study explores the diagnosis of and treatment options for patients with ulcerated tophaceous gout.

Diagnosing gout can be vexing. Most of the time, the diagnosis is made in the primary care setting where physicians diagnose gout by following one of six classification criteria, with the most widely used one being the 1977 American Rheumatism Association criteria.

A recent study examined the systemic nature of gout with the goal of identifying proteomic pathways that could lead to co-morbidities in gout patients.

Despite a number of effective medication therapy options, there is international evidence that gout is inadequately treated. Studies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and now Australia, show the same triad of ineffectiveness: low levels of urate-lowering therapy (ULT), infrequent serum urate and renal function testing, and very low rates of achievement of target serum urate levels.

Two commonly prescribed gout therapies have also been shown to successfully treat another life-altering condition, researchers reported.

For gout patients, quality of life and satisfaction are closely tied to treatment efficacy and whether they are currently experiencing a gout attack.

It may not be a surprise that having more gout flares in a year is more costly, but a recent study has quantified just how much more expensive they are.

Allopurinol's overall impact on the risk of mortality has been studied but is not yet well-understood. Now, a study has shown that the benefits from this treatment likely outweigh the risk of serious side effects.

Four trials of moderate-quality evidence found no significant improvement in pain control in acute gout with NSAIDs vs COX inhibitors. But there was evidence that patients stopped NSAIDs early because of adverse events.

Gout attacks really do occur more often at night, and here is proof. Theories abound as to why, but effective prophylactic treatments to reduce the risk of nocturnal exacerbations appear to be just what the doctor ordered.

Horrifying laceration? Unbelievably large tumor? It's all there for viewing on a free medical app called Figure 1. Its software lets hundreds of thousands of medical professionals post clinical photos, confer on diagnoses, and show their own innovative work. The site has more than 100 million archived photos, all sent in by users, most of them physicians.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will require manufacturers to update labels in order to red flag possible serious side effects associated with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).

Coming next from Medicare: the ICD-10 Obmudsman. Billing under the dreaded new International Classification of Diseases-10 (ICD-10) coding system will get a bit less onerous under a deal brokered between Medicare and the American Medical Association.