Health & Medicine
Gout May Protect Against Alzheimer's Disease
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Mar 05, 2015 09:26 PM EST
Gout doesn't come with the most positive connotation. The most common form of inflammatory arthritis, it's also linked to a higher risk of heart and kidney problems that can result in numerous other heart issues. Yet previous studies have suggested that it may also have a protective effect for the brain that's possibly connected to uric acid, the chemical that's found in a person's blood that can crystalize, leading to gout.
New findings published in the British Medical Journal suggest that gout may protect against Alzheimer's disease. In fact, previous studies have shown that the antioxidant properties of uric acid may protect against the development or progression of the most common form of dementia, as well as other neurodegenerative illnesses, such as Parkinson's disease.
"As a major natural antioxidant in the body, uric acid has been estimated to account for more than 50 percent of the antioxidant capacity of plasma," said study author Dr. Hyon Choi, medicine professor at Harvard Medical School, via FoxNews.com."With these potentially neuro-protective properties, uric acid has been hypothesized to protect against oxidative stress, a prominent contributor to dopaminergic neuron degeneration in Parkinson's disease, which may also play an important role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease."
For the study, researchers used data from The Health Improvement Network (THIN), an electronic medical record database from general practices that is representative of the UK general population, from 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2013.
They examined 3.7 million people between the ages of 40 and over who had been registered and enrolled with a practice for at least one year during the study period. Anyone diagnosed with dementia or gout prior to the study were excluded from the study.
An analysis was studied among those with gout to five non-gout individuals matched by age, date of study entry, enrollment year and body mass index (BMI) via the THIN data.
Participants were followed up with until they developed the disease, died, left the database or the follow up period ended.
From the sample, 309 new cases of Alzheimer's developed from 59,224 patients with gout and 1,942 cases among 238,805 in the comparison group over an average five-year follow up.
They found there was a 24 percent lower risk of Alzheimer's disease amongst people with a history of gout, after taking into account age, sex, BMI, socio-economic status, lifestyle factors, prior heart conditions and use of heart drugs.
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First Posted: Mar 05, 2015 09:26 PM EST
Gout doesn't come with the most positive connotation. The most common form of inflammatory arthritis, it's also linked to a higher risk of heart and kidney problems that can result in numerous other heart issues. Yet previous studies have suggested that it may also have a protective effect for the brain that's possibly connected to uric acid, the chemical that's found in a person's blood that can crystalize, leading to gout.
New findings published in the British Medical Journal suggest that gout may protect against Alzheimer's disease. In fact, previous studies have shown that the antioxidant properties of uric acid may protect against the development or progression of the most common form of dementia, as well as other neurodegenerative illnesses, such as Parkinson's disease.
"As a major natural antioxidant in the body, uric acid has been estimated to account for more than 50 percent of the antioxidant capacity of plasma," said study author Dr. Hyon Choi, medicine professor at Harvard Medical School, via FoxNews.com."With these potentially neuro-protective properties, uric acid has been hypothesized to protect against oxidative stress, a prominent contributor to dopaminergic neuron degeneration in Parkinson's disease, which may also play an important role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease."
For the study, researchers used data from The Health Improvement Network (THIN), an electronic medical record database from general practices that is representative of the UK general population, from 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2013.
They examined 3.7 million people between the ages of 40 and over who had been registered and enrolled with a practice for at least one year during the study period. Anyone diagnosed with dementia or gout prior to the study were excluded from the study.
An analysis was studied among those with gout to five non-gout individuals matched by age, date of study entry, enrollment year and body mass index (BMI) via the THIN data.
Participants were followed up with until they developed the disease, died, left the database or the follow up period ended.
From the sample, 309 new cases of Alzheimer's developed from 59,224 patients with gout and 1,942 cases among 238,805 in the comparison group over an average five-year follow up.
They found there was a 24 percent lower risk of Alzheimer's disease amongst people with a history of gout, after taking into account age, sex, BMI, socio-economic status, lifestyle factors, prior heart conditions and use of heart drugs.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone