Statistics show that many gout sufferers also have heart problems. Medical men argue whether one causes the other or if they are a common consequence of heredity, bad diet or lifestyle choices. Today I’ll tell you about a new study that shows that gout and heart disease are linked. You will see that, if you suffer from either condition, you must take treatments that will help both.
Back in 2005, researchers analyzed thousands of gout patients, looking for links between gout and other illnesses. Their study, Gout and the Risk of Acute Myocardial Infarction, proved that gout patients had more heart attacks than people without gout. But how are the two linked?
Critics pointed to the fact that the study was based on statistical analysis of medical records. This type of study, known as epidemiological, is a common way that researchers can establish health trends in populations to identify, amongst other things, risk factors associated with various diseases. Whilst not denying the validity of these statistics, many claim that the value is limited – giving no indication whether diseases are linked by more than mere coincidence caused by common factors.
The latest study is a clinical, case-controlled review of over 700 patients, approximately half of these being heart disease sufferers. Independent association of high serum uric Acid concentration with angiographically defined coronary artery disease, proves that high uric acid is directly linked to heart disease. It also suggests that high uric acid could be used clinically as a marker for increase risk of heart attack.
People have wondered about a link between heart disease and gout for years. It now seems that, after years of study, there is a clear indication that the two conditions are linked. It may be many more years before anyone learns how the two are linked. For now, you must be careful that the choices you make for gout, including what you eat, do not aggravate other conditions such as heart disease. I’ll be looking at this in more detail in my gout diet plan, and other lifestyle and treatment articles. What is important for now, if you suffer from gout or heart disease, you must take treatments that help both conditions.
Heart disease has been reported for several years in medical journals to be strongly associated with long-term sleep apnea, even though most cardiologists have not yet caught up with that information. And as I have written elsewhere on this website, many attacks of gout are a direct result of sleep apnea the previous night. Both conditions are discussed in my new book The Perils of Sleep Apnea – An Undiagnosed Epidemic.
It would be interesting to know which of these CAD cases suffered from prior Hypertension -as this is also a significant factor in the equation,probably higher significance than high UA on it’s own.
[Especially as Gout and HT go together often]