Symptoms of Gout
Gout is a very commonly encountered problem all over the world today. It is observed generally in the elderly population, especially those who have been suffering for a long time from arthritis. Gout is a common painful type of arthritis.Gout (also called metabolic arthritis) is a disease created by a buildup of uric acid. In this condition, monosodium urate or uric acid crystals are deposited on the articular cartilage of joints, tendons and surrounding tissues due to elevated concentrations of uric acid in the blood stream. This provokes an inflammatory reaction of these tissues.
Description of Gout
Uric acid is a substance that normally forms when the body breaks down waste products (called purines). Uric acid is usually dissolved in the blood and passes through the kidneys into the urine. For people with gout, the uric acid level in the blood is so high that uric acid crystals form and deposit in joints and other tissues. This causes the joint lining to become inflamed, resulting in sudden and severe attacks of pain, tenderness, redness and warmth.
Symptoms Of Gout
1. Touching or moving the toe may be intensely painful and patients often say that having as much as a bed sheet over the toe increases the pain. Symptoms of gout develop quickly (sometimes in 1 day) and typically occur in only one joint at a time. Rarely, symptoms develop in two or three joints simultaneously. If widespread symptoms occur, the condition is probably not gout. If left untreated, gout can damage joints and cause disability.
2. Intense joint pain. Gout usually affects the large joint of your big toe but it can occur in your feet, ankles, knees, hands and wrists. If untreated, the pain typically lasts five to 10 days and then stops. The discomfort subsides gradually over one to two weeks, leaving the joint apparently normal and pain-free.
3. The big toe joint is most commonly affected; however, the joints of the feet, ankles, knees, wrists, fingers, and elbows may also be involved. Inflammation of the fluid sacs (bursae) that cushion tissues may develop, particularly in the elbow (olecranon bursitis) and knee (prepatellar bursitis).
4. People usually have gout for a period of up to two weeks (an attack) and then it goes away eventually, even without treatment. With treatment, this can be reduced to less than one week. Left untreated, attacks of gout may become more frequent and last longer.
5. Acute pain in the big toe, which becomes tender, hot, and swollen in a few hours, joint pains (attack) usually occurs at midnight or in the early hours of the morning, sometimes damages kidney.
6. In some people, the attacks don’t go away - instead, they linger on to become chronic gout. The inflammation persists, while the crystals can permanently damage and deform the affected joints. As well, uric acid crystals can build up in tissues other than the joints, forming deposits called tophi that can show up as whitish or yellowish chalky lumps under the skin, typically in the fingers, toes, back of the elbow, behind the heel, and around the outer edge of the ear.
