I have sleep apnea and use a type of
CPAP machine when I sleep. I apparently am doing all the right
things, as I have never had any problems with gout. However, this
study says that sleep apnea may increase the risk of developing gout
and experiencing flare-ups.
I know from friends that the pain can
be intense and make walking very difficult. Gout causes swelling of
a joint, normally in the big toe. Gout is caused by the accumulation
of uric acid crystals in joints and tissue. Sleep apnea causes
periods of oxygen deprivation during the night when people stop
breathing, and this triggers the overproduction of uric acid in the
blood stream. The study team states that little in known about the
relationship between the two conditions.
The study, in Arthritis and
Rheumatology, states that in 2007-2008, almost six percent of men and
two percent of women in the U.S. Experienced gout, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sleep apnea, which is
more common and if untreated can increase the risk of high blood
pressure, heart attack, stroke, and heart failure.
Lead author, Yuqing Zhang of Boston
University Clinical Epidemiology Research and Training Unit says
obesity plays a role in both sleep apnea and gout. He continued that
sleep apnea still increased the risk of gout even when weight was
taken into account.
The researchers in the United Kingdom
used data on almost 10,000 people newly diagnosed with sleep apnea
and compared them to more than 40,000 people of similar sex, age, and
body composition, but without sleep apnea. In a one-year period,
there were 270 cases of gout with 76 in the sleep apnea group and 194
in the larger comparison group. Gout was diagnosed at an average age
of 60. Gout was almost twice as common in the sleep apnea group as
in the comparison group, according to the analysis.
Obesity increases the risk for sleep apnea, but some thin people have
sleep apnea, too, and even in these people, the risk of gout was
increased by 80 percent.
The next step is to test whether
treating sleep apnea also reduces the risk for gout. Some studies
show that if you get treatment, your uric acid may go down. Sleep
apnea can be treated with lifestyle changes, such as losing weight,
wearing mouthpieces, breathing devices at night, or with surgery.
“It takes years for uric acid
crystals to accumulate in the joints and lead to an eventual gout
flare, so sleep apnea may not “cause” the gout, but may create a
more ideal environment for a flare up, said Dr. Robert Thomas Keenan
of Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, who
was not part of the new study.”
“Gout is the most common
inflammatory arthritis in the western world,” he told Reuters
Health by email. “Sleep apnea and gout risks can be reduced in
many people by losing weight if they are overweight, eating healthy
and indulging in alcohol and red meats in moderation,” he said.
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