Gout is a rheumatic disease caused by uric acid crystal buildup in joints, causing painful inflammation. Symptoms include lumpy deposits around joints, joint pain in feet, knees, elbows, wrists, and fingers, and kidney damage. Pseudo-gout is a similar condition caused by calcium buildup. Purines in foods can cause excess uric acid, and stress, alcohol, drugs, and other illnesses can trigger gout attacks. Kidney damage and topical chronic gout can occur in advanced stages.
Gout is a rheumatic disease and its symptoms can be extremely painful. Chip-like deposits of uric acid can build up in connective tissue, such as in the joints between bones, and cause inflammatory arthritis. The main obvious symptoms of gout are lumpy deposits of uric acid around the joints and the edge of the ear.
About 75% of gout patients experience pain in the big toe. Joint pain in the feet such as in the ankles, heels and insteps are also common symptoms, as are joint pains in the knees. Gout can also cause joint pain in the elbows, wrists and fingers. About 5% of all gout cases are related to arthritis.
Sometimes, the inflammatory symptoms aren’t actually caused by gout, but by a false gout called chondrocalcinosis or pseudo-gout. Calcium, not uric acid, builds up in pseudo-gout. Calcium phosphate crystals are not as serious as uric acid crystal buildup for the body.
Uric acid deposits are serious symptoms of gout, as the kidneys can be affected and kidney stones can occur. Uric acid occurs in the body when purines are broken down. Purines are found in many foods including liver, anchovies, pulses and gravy and are also part of human tissue. Normally, uric acid dissolves in the bloodstream and is eliminated from the body in the urine. If uric acid builds up in excess and is not eliminated, hyperuricemia, or excess uric acid, occurs.
While hyperuricemia is one of the symptoms of gout, it is usually only detectable through medical tests. Hyperuricemia itself is not a cause for alarm; it is only harmful when excess uric acid builds up and forms into crystals in the body. It is the painful, lumpy buildup of crystallized uric acid around the joints that is one of the major serious symptoms of the condition.
In addition to the pain caused by uric acid deposits, some other symptoms of gout are stiffness and redness around the joints. A feeling of warmth in the joints is also one of the most common symptoms. Stress can cause symptoms, as can alcohol, drugs and/or other illnesses. Gout attacks can occur months or years apart, but the attacks can become more intense and more frequent over time.
Between attacks, gout sufferers may not experience gout symptoms and this is called the “gap phase”. Kidney damage is one of the internal symptoms and often occurs in gout sufferers after a decade or more of living with the disease. Topical chronic gout is an advanced stage of gout that can be very disabling.
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