Sleep apnea tied to gout flares
|
Version 0 of 1. Sleep apnea may increase the risk of developing gout and experiencing flare-ups, according to a new study. Gout’s intense pain and swelling of a joint, often a big toe, results from the deposit of uric acid crystals in joints and tissues. The study team found that sleep apnea, a condition that prompts people to stop breathing during the night, causes periods of oxygen deprivation, triggering overproduction of uric acid in the bloodstream. In 2007-2008, almost 6 percent of men and 2 percent of women in the United States experienced gout, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sleep apnea, which is much more common, can increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and heart failure. Obesity plays an important role in both sleep apnea and gout, but sleep apnea increased the risk for gout even when weight was accounted for, said Yuqing Zhang of the Boston University Clinical Epidemiology Research and Training Unit, lead author of the study. The researchers used data on almost 10,000 people with a new diagnosis of sleep apnea and compared them with more than 40,000 people of similar sex, age, birth year and body composition but without sleep apnea. Over a one-year period, there were 270 cases of gout: 76 in the sleep apnea group and 194 in the larger comparison group. The average age of those diagnosed with gout was 60.] Gout was almost twice as common in the people had sleep apnea as in those who did not, according to the analysis, which appears in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatology. “When people have a gout attack, it’s so painful — they have limited mobility, they cannot put even one piece of paper on the toe,” Zhang said. Although obesity increases the risk of sleep apnea, some thin people have sleep apnea, and even in these people the risk of gout was increased by 80 percent, he said. The next step is to test whether treating sleep apnea reduces the risk of gout, which seems likely, Zhang said. “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,” said Robert Thomas Keenan of Duke University School of Medicine, who was not part of the new study. — Reuters |