Uric acid, blood pressure and heart disease
I have referenced multiple studies that link high uricacid levels with high blood pressure, arterial detioration and withheart disease. There are even several well done studies that showthat the link is causative and not simply linked because when theyarbitrarily cause an animals (not human) uric acid to rise, thatanimal gets high blood pressure and has severe arterial deterioration.
So much we already know and therefore taking allopurinol will reducethe exposure we all experience from this risk factor.
It occurred to me that1. There are many people who have very high levels of uric acid whodo not have gout.2. High Blood Pressure is thought to be the #1 cause of, or at leastlinked to, early death from heart disease and arterial complications.3. A very large percentage of the population suffers from high bloodpressure.
Is it possible that uric acid is a much bigger problem thatn just amenace to us gout sufferers? This would be particularly true forsomeone who is overweight and would therefore have a large storeroom, so to speak, where they can store large amounts of utris acid.
For example, if there were, which there is not, a good clinicalmeasure of the total uric acid level in a person, not just the bloodlevel but the total uric acid, then it might be prudent to put a muchlarger population onto allopurinol than is now on it.
Since I am on allopurinol and will not go off it why do I care?
Why do we, or why should we care.
Well, from a purely selfish point of view, if uric acid can be shownto be participating, even mildly, in causing high blood pressure, andif those same people also have gout free but elevated levels of uricacid, there would be a significant amount of money and researchallocated toward making this elevation of uric acid not happen.
In other words, when or if the focus of medical science falls on uricacid and how to eliminate it from our systems, there will be new waysuncovered, new treatments and all of them will apply, in a totalsense, to helping gout sufferers as well.
Terrance Molock on September 21st, 2007
I did come across some of the info.you might be lookingfor:regarding the actual amount if uric acid in the system.This wasnot the conventional “uric acid level” this was an actual amount ofuric acid. I came across it a few weeks ago when I was whipping through someinfo.on the net..sorry..I shouldda rememberred where it was. Anyway..I can’t remember the units..but it did say that peoplewith gout had 2,000..and people without gout had only 1,000. This was CLEARLY NOT a “uric acid level”..as we all know thatthat test is quickly losing meaning but an actual amount of uric acid.
Sabina Shamel on September 22nd, 2007
If that test exists, and if you can find it, and we can get theoriginal reference and how it was done and where, it will be a greatservice to all of us. If there is a standardized test we can ask ourdoctor to perform, then we can get some real information on uric acidlevels in our bodies and how those levels relate to both blood urateand urate excretion in 24 hours. By putting those numbers together wecan start to put some scientific fact into our “by guess and bygolly” way of living.
The missing unknnown in the equation is the overall level of uricacid that we have in our bodies. I do understand that any test isonly an approximation because you may have it in your joints astrophi and I may have it around my waist as fat cells but at leastsome quantatization is better than only the urate. The urate isimportant, I don’t pretend that it is not, because it tells you whereyou are on your own equillibrium cycle and you must establish foryourself just where your attacks happen, but none of us that I knowof, knows how much uric acid load we carry around.
I actually had a good discussion today with one rumatolagist and twoMD’s, played golf with them, on the subject and they all agreed withme that uric acid as a contibutor to high blood pressure has not madeit into the current medical literature. The rumatologist was familiarwith the work I was talking about and he also thinks that non goutpeople may be having a high blood pressure reaction to excess uricacid. By the way, the doctors both pointed out that very high bloodpressure is one of the symptoms of uremic poisoning.
Terrance Molock on September 23rd, 2007
For sure Walter..this old uric acid level nonsense has gone onfor way too long now..BUT it is pretty much all we have rightnow.Used to be in the medical community that..”Gout..oh you have highuric acid levels” therefore..high uric acid levels=gout..low uricacid levels=no gout..so now it is just WAY more complicated with likeabout 90% of hyperuricemics with no gout..and more and more normallevels with gout..such it is that the labs have/are dropping theirthresholds..to pick up/flag even lower levels as high.Myrheumatologist says that here in Canada..the umol/L..normal is up to450..he says nope..400s plenty high and works BAD for gout patients. I literally just came upon it..real quick..a few weeks ago(I wasdigging around for some info.on migrating crystals/changing attacks.) I was in a Yahoo search engine..punchin’ away under..uric acidcrystals,gout crystals,getting rid of gout crystals,getting rid ofuric acid crystals..whatever came up it must have been reasonabllytechnical..I went there..took a quick look.Left. I do not remember “any”/”the” test..or how they arrived at it..Ijust remember seeing that quick little blurb about how gootufferershave 2,000 something..and normal have 1,000..
I will go back sometime and root around a bit for ya..