Gout Treatment
What I tell my patients when I treat them is that we can get your urate levels down in your blood by using medication and if you would like to, you’re certainly welcome to try changes in diet. I always talk to patients about the things that can cause a flare up in their gout. For example:
- Alcohol binges
- Seafood binges
- Sugar sweetened soft drinks
Very prescriptive diets aren’t so effective, primarily for the reason that people don’t stick to them, and people eat what they eat because they like doing that or because that’s their culture.
Research
The research aims to identify where patient knowledge of their treatment is lacking and help provide patients with the assurance to take their medication. It is aimed at really helping the patient on the ground. There are lots of different types of research you can do. You can study genetics and you can study biology and often those things take a lot longer to filter through to the patient, but this research is very exciting.
Funding
Each year through the generosity of donors Arthritis Queensland provides $50,000 funding for a post-doctoral research fellowship to support medical and clinical research into treatments for arthritis. The funding is coordinated through the Arthritis Australia National Research program and awarded to a researcher based in Queensland.
By Associate Professor Philip Robinson