Uric Acid and Diet — Insights into the Epidemic of Cardiovascular Disease

Gout is the only enemy that I do not wish to have at my feet.— Reverend Sydney Smith, 1841Gout, a disease that has been known since antiquity, is an acute, often recurrent arthritis mediated by the crystallization of uric acid within the joints and typically associated with hyperuricemia. Described by Hippocrates during the Golden Age of Greece, gout was originally a disease of the affluent, primarily observed in middle-aged men of the wealthy upper class (“the Patrician malady”). A “disease of kings and king of diseases,” gout has often kept good company, afflicting kings (including Alexander the Great, . . .