If life serves up a bowl of cherries, and gout attacks are 'the pits': Implications for therapy

摘要

Over the last 40 years, the burden of gout in the US has risen considerably. Based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2008, 8.3 million American adults are estimated to have gout (1). Many factors are understood to account for this burgeoning trend, including the concomitant rise in body mass index and several related chronic medical disorders, particularly elements of the metabolic syndrome (2). In addition, the frequency of gout has risen steadily in women, whose risk of developing an acute gout attack increases abruptly after menopause (3,4). As humans live longer, the steady increase in gout incidence with each successive decade of life translates into a rising population burden of gout (1).