Is Gout And Arthritis The Same

What To Do If You Have Oa

First of all, you need to try and get surgery that can replace the joint, if that is possible and if the OA occurs in one joint. By doing this, you will cure OA and you will be at a much lower risk of getting gout in the first place. If this is impossible due to any known reason, you need to manage both types of arthritis. Make sure to have a diet plan that can manage OA and gout at the same time. This isnt difficult considering the same diet is effective in treating both types of arthritis. You can still have a proper lifestyle despite the fact, you have gout and osteoarthritis.

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Whats The Outlook For People With Gout

Untreated gout can lead to permanent joint damage. The buildup of uric acid in the joints and soft tissue is called tophus. Some people with gout can also develop other health problems, such as severe arthritis, kidney stones and heart disease. Its important to discuss your symptoms with a healthcare provider.

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How Does A Doctor Diagnose Gout

If you have sudden or severe pain in a joint, you should talk to your primary care provider . Your PCP may send you to a rheumatologist, a doctor who specializes in gout and other kinds of arthritis.

Healthcare providers consider several things when confirming gout:

• Symptoms: The provider will ask you to describe your symptoms, how often they happen and how long they last.
• Physical examination: Your provider will examine the affected joint to look for swelling, redness and warmth.
• Blood work: A test can measure the amount of uric acid in your blood.
• Imaging tests: You may have pictures taken of the affected joint with X-rays, an ultrasound or MRI.
• Aspiration: The provider may use a needle to pull fluid from the joint. Using a microscope, a team member can look for uric acid crystals or a different problem .

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Ten Tips For Beating Gout

If you have gout, use these nutrition tips to lower your risk:

Symptoms Of Rheumatoid Arthritis And Gout

Because they are both forms of inflammatory arthritis, RA and gout share some of the same symptoms. Both can cause pain, inflammation and redness, swollen joints, and visible nodules . RA and gout can also cause stiffness in the affected joints, limiting the joints range of motion over time. These similarities may appear to make the two conditions indiscernible, but the location and onset of pain can help set them apart.

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What Are Future Possible Treatments Of Gout

Fortunately, present medications are successful in the vast majority of gout patients. But some patients cannot tolerate our present arsenal of gout medications. For others, these agents are not sufficiently effective. Therefore, new treatments are continually being sought. Some of the more promising include anakinra, rilonacept, canakinumab, BCX4208 and arhalofenate.

Fizzy Drinks Linked To Gout

Men who consume large amounts of fizzy or sugary drinks are at higher risk of contracting gout than those who abstain, a new study has concluded.

Researchers from Harvard and the University of Vancouver found that those who consumed five or six sweet beverages a week were nearly 30% more likely to suffer attacks of the illness than those who drank less than one serving monthly. The risk rose to 85% for those drinking two or more a day.

As well as sugar in drinks, the study found that natural fruit sugar, or fructose, posed a substantial risk for gout.

That means people who drank orange or apple juice or even ate those fruit regularly were prone to the illness. Meanwhile, diet soft drinks, which often contain sweetener rather than fructose, were not found to be associated with gout.

The risk of gout was about twice as high among men in the highest fifth of free fructose consumption than among men in the lowest fifth the current study provides prospective evidence that fructose and fructose-rich foods are important risk factors in the primary prevention of gout in men.

Hyon K Choi and Gary Curham surveyed over 46,000 male medical professionals aged 45-70 with no history of the illness over a period of 12 years, as part of a wider study into diet and general health. A total of 755 reported incidents of the condition. The link between gout and sugary drinks and fructose remained even when accounting for age, alcohol consumption, body mass and high blood pressure.

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Gout & Alcohol: Why It Matters

You wont necessarily have to give up alcoholic beverages if youre diagnosed with gout. Why does alcohol intake matter at all? Some people who drink a lot of alcohol never get gout. Alcohol can increase levels of uric acid in your body. So it can be a strong cause of hyperuricemia and gout. Alcohol works to raise urate levels by decreasing how much urate your kidneys excrete. Beer has earned a reputation as being especially bad for gout, since it has this effect on your kidneys, but also because beer has its own proteins that are broken down to urate in the body. So drinking beer raises urate in two different ways.

Beer and liquor are especially linked to higher uric acid levels, and wine is linked to this as well. Moderate intake of alcohol is generally defined as two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women. However, even moderate drinking on a regular basis is associated with a higher risk of recurring gout attacks.

You may be able to drink occasionally and not experience a gout flare, but regular drinking of any type of alcohol puts you at risk. Also, heavy or even regular moderate drinking adds calories to your daily intake. It can contribute to weight gain in some people .

While only you can decide how much, what or when to drink alcohol, your doctor and nurses can advise you on how to make these changes in a healthy way. Keep these thoughts in mind when you talk about drinking with your healthcare professionals:

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Summary Of Gout Vs Rheumatoid Arthritis

• Both gout and rheumatoid arthritis cause problems with the joints including pain and swelling.
• Gout happens when there is too much uric acid in the body causing it to be deposited in the joints.
• Rheumatoid arthritis seems to occur because the immune system attacks the joints of the body.
• Both conditions can be treated with medications.

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Who Is Affected By Gout

Gout can affect anyone. It usually occurs earlier in men than women. It generally occurs after menopause in women. Men can be three times more likely than women to get it because they have higher levels of uric acid most of their lives. Women reach these uric acid levels after menopause.

People are more likely to get gout if they have:

• Obesity, or a lot of extra weight.

You are also more likely to develop gout if you:

• Consume a diet high in animal proteins
• Consume a significant amount of alcohol
• Are on water pills .

Ra And Gout May Occur Together

One of the biggest questions most of you may have is can these two diseases occur at the same time. The answer is yes. Gout and rheumatoid arthritis can be present in the same person and the attacks may occur individually or separately. This is still a rare issue, but keep in mind that it is possible.

I must add that there was a study which proved this claim. It was conducted in Germany and it included more than 100 women. They discovered that 13 of them have experienced pain in the feet or better said a gout attack. Here is also important to add that gout attacks may simulate the RA attacks, which isnt so rare after all. This happens when gout isnt diagnosed, so it is believed that a person suffers from RA, while in reality gout causes issues.

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The Role Of Diet In Gout Prevention

Dietary control may be sufficient in a patient with mildly elevated uric acid, for example, 7.0 mg/dL

For those with a higher level, for example, 10.0 mg/dL, diet alone will not usually prevent gout. For the latter, even a very strict diet only reduces the blood uric acid by about 1 mg/dL- not enough, in general, to keep uric acid from precipitating in the joints. The cutoff where patients with gout seem to dramatically reduce their number of attacks is when their uric acid level is taken below 6.0 mg/dL.4

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How Can An Attack Of Gout Be Treated

The management of an acute attack of gout is very different from the prevention of subsequent attacks.

Treatments used for prevention, such as allopurinol can actually make things worse if given during an attack, and so need to be held back until the attack has resolved for several weeks.

There are a number of measures that can help resolve an attack of gout. See Table 2 for summary of treatment strategies for acute gout. One principle is that treatment for an attack of gout should be instituted quickly, since quick treatment can often be rewarded with a quick improvement.

If an attack of gout is allowed to last more than a day or so before treatment is started, the response to treatment may be much slower.

Table 2: Medications to treat acute attacks of gout

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What Increases Your Chances For Gout

The following make it more likely that you will develop hyperuricemia, which causes gout:

• Being male

Differences Between Ra And Gout

Both diseases cause redness, swelling, and pain in the joints. Both can cause serious disability and disrupt your quality of life.

However, a close look at initial signs and which joints are involved will clearly differentiate these two diseases. The best way to know whether you have RA or gout is to make an appointment with your doctor for a diagnosis.

Specific signs that distinguish the diseases:

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Location Of Gout Symptoms Vs Rheumatoid Arthritis Symptoms

Rheumatoid arthritis tends to affect similar joints on both sides of the body if one knee joint is affected by RA, for instance, the other one will likely be affected as well. RA can affect any joint in the body, as can gout. However, the two tend to affect certain joints more frequently than others. RA often starts by affecting the small joints in the hands and feet, whereas gout typically develops in the large joint of the big toe.

MyRAteam members report experiencing gout symptoms in a variety of joints. The gout started in my ankles, wrote one member, who shared that their pain was particularly intense. Another member shared that they are dealing with gout in feet, ankles, and knees. As one member admitted, I never even thought gout occurred anywhere except for the big toe and thats one place I dont have it!

If you experience symptoms of either of these forms of arthritis, seek medical advice from your rheumatologist. They will be able to diagnose the cause of your symptoms and provide you with the right treatment.

Do Doctors Treat Ra And Gout The Same Way

Neither RA nor gout is curable. But there are treatments to help manage your symptoms. Some are the same for either condition:

• Pain treatments. Over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen and naproxen can help with either condition. A medication called colchicine can also ease gout pain.
• Inflammation treatments. Corticosteroids like prednisone can help with inflammation and the pain it causes.

When it comes to treating the underlying disease, doctors focus their efforts on treating the cause. RA treatment may include drugs that suppress the immune system.

Gout treatment usually includes medications that prevent the buildup of uric acid crystals.

What you eat can also affect the levels of uric acid in your blood. If you have gout, take these steps to prevent an attack of gout:

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Difference Between Osteoarthritis And Rheumatoid Arthritis

There are several different types of arthritis. Osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis are two of the most common forms. Although the symptoms of these two types of arthritis can be similar, its very important to distinguish between them in order to determine the proper treatment.

At the University of Michigan Health System, our experienced rheumatologists will do appropriate tests to determine which type of arthritis you have. Then we will develop an effective treatment plan and will explain your options.

Osteoarthritisoccurs when the smooth cartilage joint surface wears out. Osteoarthritis usually begins in an isolated joint.

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, which means that the immune system malfunctions and attacks the body instead of intruders. In this case, it attacks the synovial membrane that encases and protects the joints. Rheumatoid arthritis often targets several joints at one time. The symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis include:

• the symmetrical nature of the disease ,
• fever

The Role Of Blood Tests

With no definitive blood test available for RA, doctors instead look for certain antibodies in the blood that would suggest its presence, such as antinuclear antibodies, rheumatoid factor, and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies. Your rheumatologist will also order a complete blood count to see if you have anemia, which is common among those with RA.

RA is more difficult to identify than gout because measuring the amount of uric acid in the blood is considered a definitive test for gout, Dr. Portnoff says. However, levels of uric acid are actually lower during a gout flare, so your doctor will want to repeat the test when symptoms subside.

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What Are The Best Foods To Eat When You Have Gout

While eating particular foods wont be enough to make gout go away, studies suggest that certain foods and drinks may help reduce uric acid in your body. For example:

• Milk. Some early research suggests that drinking skim milk may help reduce uric acid and gout flare-ups. It speeds up the excretion of uric acid in your urine and also reduces your bodys inflammatory response to uric acid crystals in your joints.
• Cherries. Scientists are currently researching the benefits of cherries and cherry juice for managing gout symptoms, and early results are promising. Cherries have known anti-inflammatory properties, and they may also help reduce uric acid in your body.
• Coffee. You may have heard that coffee is acidic, but the type of acid in coffee is very different from uric acid. In fact, drinking coffee daily can reduce your uric acid levels by several means. It slows the breakdown of purine into uric acid and speeds the rate of excretion.
• Water. People who drink five to eight glasses of water a day are less likely to experience gout symptoms. This makes sense since your kidneys use water to excrete uric acid in your urine. Water is also good for kidney health. Impaired kidney function is one factor that can contribute to gout.

However, many healthcare providers prefer to focus on general dietary guidelines rather than particular foods. They suggest that you:

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The Role Of Imaging Tests

Both RA and gout can cause joint erosion, so rheumatologists will order X-rays to look for this. X-rays can also detect the beginnings of tophi, but Dr. Portnoff says theyre not an essential part of the diagnostic process for gout because a patients clinical history, physical exam, and uric acid testing will identify gout.

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Do Gout And Ra Have The Same Symptoms

Both gout and RA can cause pain and stiffness in multiple joints. But otherwise the two tend to follow different patterns.

Rheumatoid arthritis. This condition usually starts in smaller joints like your hands and feet. Theyâll feel tender, swollen, and warm to the touch. Then it usually moves to other, larger joints like your wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, knees, and hips. Itâs rare, but you might also have fatigue and loss of appetite or a fever, though thatâs less likely.

Most people have similar symptoms on both sides of the body. That means if one shoulder hurts, the other one probably does, too.

RA can make your joints feel stiff when you wake up in the morning. The pain may get better with activity over the course of the day.

Gout. Unlike RA, it usually starts with a sudden attack of pain. The pain can be severe. It isnât unusual for a person with gout to feel like their joint is on fire. It might feel like thereâs a hot poker in the joint.

Gout usually affects only one joint. The big toe is a common spot, but gout also can affect ankles, knees, elbows, or wrists.

The affected joint also might look red and swollen. It may be warm to the touch. Sometimes a gout attack can cause a fever.