Scientists have confirmed what practitioners have known anecdotally for centuries, that eating a diet rich in meat and seafood can cause gout.
They have also learned that eating low-fat dairy products can help avoid the painful inflammatory disease and that vegetables rich in purines like peas and beans does not contribute to the condition, as previously believed.
“The association of purine-rich foods with gout had long been suspected but never proven,” said Hyon Choi, a rheumatologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
“This is the first evidence that dairy products can be strongly protective,” he added.
The research is published in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Gout is a form of arthritis that affects an estimated half million Canadians. The condition is caused by deposits of uric acid in the joints that lead to swelling and severe pain.
Most people who develop gout are overweight, and the ongoing obesity epidemic means the prevalence of the age-old disease is soaring.
“Changing dietary habits and expanding waistlines over the past 20 years mean the number of people with gout is increasing rapidly,” said Dr. Adel Fam, a rheumatologist and professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.
He said the new research, is important because “it clearly establishes the connection between diet and gout.”
To conduct the research, Dr. Choi and his colleagues used data from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, a massive research project that has been tracking the health and nutritional habits of more than 50,000 male health professionals -- dentists, osteopaths, optometrists, pharmacists, veterinarians, and podiatrists -- since 1986.
At the outset, none of the participants had gout but, by 1998, 730 men had developed the condition. The researchers carefully analyzed the dietary information to see what distinguished those who developed gout.
The study confirms suspicions about the role of red meat and seafood.
Gout was 51 per cent more likely to develop in the group with the highest seafood consumption, and 41 per cent more likely in the group with the highest consumption of beef, pork and lamb, compared with the lowest consumption groups. The group with the highest consumption of low-fat dairy products was 42 per cent less likely to develop gout.
There was no association between gout and high intake of high-fat dairy products or vegetables rich in purine, including peas, beans, mushrooms, cauliflower and spinach.
Purine is a compound in the genetic material of each cell, but the amount inside cells varies from food to food. Digestion breaks purine down into uric acid. Gout is caused by too much uric acid in the blood. The excess uric acid forms crystal deposits in joints, particularly in the big toe, feet and ankles.
Known as the “disease of kings and king of disease,” gout plagued a number of historical figures, including scores of royalty, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin and Leonardo da Vinci.
Once a disease of the wealthy -- because only they could afford regular consumption of fatty red meat -- gout now hits poor minorities disproportionately hard, in particular aboriginals.
