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 People who chose to get weight loss surgery are also less than half
as likely to develop hyperuricemia, too much uric acid in urine,
which can be a precursor to gout, the study team writes in the
Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
Gout is an intensely painful condition involving tender joints and
redness that is caused by a build-up of uric acid in joints.
Gout affects nearly 4 percent of people in the United States and is
on the rise, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
“Obesity is extremely common in western and developing countries and
it comes with a burden of associated diseases, such as gout itself,”
said lead author Dr. Cristina Maglio of the University of Gothenburg
in Sweden.
“Bariatric surgery is the only obesity treatment that is effective
in reducing body weight up to many years after the surgery,” Maglio
said by email.
To explore the link between gastric surgeries and gout, the study
team used data from a Swedish study on nearly 4,000 middle-aged,
obese participants recruited between 1987 and 2001 from healthcare
centers across Sweden.
Half of the patients chose to undergo bariatric surgeries including
gastric bypass, gastric banding and stomach stapling, while the
other half of patients received no surgery and acted as a comparison
group.
None of the subjects had gout at the start of the study and both
groups had follow-ups about 20 years into the study to check for
gout and hyperuricemia.
Researchers found that people who received bariatric surgery were 40
percent less likely to develop gout, compared with people who did
not have surgery.
The control group suffered 201”gout events” during the study period,
compared with 138 gout cases in the surgery group.
The differences translate into one case of gout prevented for every
32 people treated with bariatric surgery, the authors calculate.
Participants’ body weight and other risk factors like having high
blood pressure did not have an effect on how well surgery worked to
reduce people’s risk of gout.
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At the follow up, the surgery group was 53 percent less likely than
the comparison group to have high uric acid, and one case of
hyperuricemia was prevented for every eight people treated with
surgery, according to the report.
“Gout is a very common and somewhat debilitating problem,” Dr.
Phillip Schauer told Reuters Health. “While there is medication for
gout, it’s not always effective and patients can suffer quite severe
pain from this problem.”
Diet and exercise alone as a means to lose weight will likely not
work well enough to lower the risk of gout, said Schauer, a
professor of surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of
Medicine who was not involved with the study.
“For people who suffer gout and are obese and despite medical
treatment are still suffering from gout attacks, they ought to think
about surgery as an option,” said Schauer. He noted that the surgery
might also target other health conditions like diabetes and high
blood pressure.
“People should be aware that bariatric surgery is effective not only
in reducing body weight but also the risk of developing serious
conditions that are commonly associated with obesity, such as gout,”
Maglio said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/2e2IyJC Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, Online
October 8, 2016.
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