Scientists from the University of Nottingham found that gout flares double the risk for heart attack or stroke over the two months that follow.
They found a spike in risk endures even three to four months after the gout flare-up. There was no added risk more than four months after a flare.
The research is published in JAMA and was conducted by Abhishek Abhishek et al.
Gout is a common and complex form of arthritis that can affect anyone. It’s characterized by sudden, severe attacks of pain, swelling, redness and tenderness in one or more joints, most often in the big toe.
When gout flares up, the joint pain is often excruciating. But that’s not the only worry tied to this common inflammatory arthritic condition.
Gout often occurs alongside other health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease.
In the current study, researchers looked at data on more than 62,500 British gout patients between 1997 and 2020.
During that time period, nearly 10,500 patients had a heart attack or stroke after being diagnosed with gout.
The team found those patients were two times as likely to have had a gout flare during the two preceding months. They were also 1.5 times as likely to have had a flare three to four months prior.
The effect was strong even after the team excluded all patients diagnosed with heart disease or stroke before learning they had gout.
Moreover, the gout patients who died from a heart attack or stroke had over four times the odds of experiencing a gout flare in the preceding 60 days.
And the odds that a flare occurred three to four months prior doubled.
The team says that the increased heart risk was temporary and subsided altogether after four months. Still, the results suggest gout flares are tied to a transient increase in heart disease events.
If you care about heart health, please read studies about novel causes of irregular heart rhythm, and she put off heart symptoms until it was almost too late.
For more information about heart disease, please see recent studies about two effective ways to quickly restore normal heart rhythm, and results showing one cup of nitrate-rich vegetables per day may prevent heart disease.
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