Footnote about urate level units
Please note that the units I quoted for my wife’s urate levels ( e-mail ofNovember 4th) were in milli mols per litre, which seems to be standard in the UKwhile in the States the unit is milli grams per decilitre. To convert theformer to the latter multiply by 16.6 or 100/6 to be exact. This means that her0.39 in UK units is equivalent to 6.5 on the American scale and her 0.3 is thesame as 5 in the States. I guess this makes her a marginal candidate for goutand we hope that allopurinol will lower
Sabina Shamel on September 2nd, 2007
Allopurinol wil not hurt her, certainly, and it will lower her uratelevels and if it make the pain go away, then — well-you know the oldjoke about the man sitting on the bus tearing up bits of paper. thebus driver askes him what he is doing and he says he is keeping theelephants away.the bus driver exclaims - well sir, there aren’t any elephants aroundhere for at least 3 to 5 thousand miles.The guy keeps tearing up the little bits of paper and replies-?”See,it’s working.”
You have urate levels from before for comparison and take at least300 mg of allopurinol for at least six months and then retest forurate. if it is then under 4 or five and she has not had an attack in4 to 5 months, I would suggest cutting the dose then to 100. I’mafraid that whether there are elephants around or not, if she hasless pain with taking allopurinol, she will probably want to continueit. Just make sure you take vitamin C and vitamin E-the alpha dtocopherol variety, not the d,l racemic mixture. The naruraloptically active form is a lot better.And good luck to her and you–hope the elephants go away and staygone.