Author reply

摘要

We thank Douglas for his comment on our article and on the new information he has provided on the health of those Australian Aborigines he examined in 1965.It would seem from more contemporary reports of the general health of Australian Aborigines that the prevalence of hypertension and overweight has increased compared with the figures that Douglas reports from 1965. The report suggests that in the absence of 21st-century environmental risk factors for gout, such as alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, Australian Aborigines historically had a very low rate of gouty arthritis. There is a small amount of published work on gout in Australian Aborigines, including a recent report on gout occurring in inpatients in the Townsville Hospital in North Queensland from 2001 to 2010.