THE image of gout sufferers as cantankerous old men with a fondness for port was shattered yesterday — drinking beer is more likely to give rise to the painful disease.

Contrary to popular myth, spirits are less likely to contribute to gout and wine is shown to have no link at all. The findings are published today in the medical journal The Lancet after an American study involving almost 50,000 men.

Gout is a painful condition, which causes inflammation of the joints and often starts in the feet or toes. The joint swells and skin around the area feels tight while turning a shiny purplish red.

The consumption of alcohol causes hyperuricaemia, (an increased production of uric acid in the blood) which once deposited in a person’s joints can lead to gout.

Hyon Choi and her colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital spent 12 years studying 47,000 male medical staff. The team looked at alcohol consumption and its relationship to incidences of gout among the men, and 730 cases were confirmed.

The results showed that men who drank two or more beers a day were two-and-a-half times more likely to develop gout than those who did not drink. The study suggested that those who drink a bottle of beer a day, or a glass of wine, were 30 per cent more likely to suffer from gout.

For those who drank two to three pints, or three glasses of wine, there was a 50 per cent increased risk, while heavy drinking doubled the likelihood.

Men drinking the same levels of spirits a day were 1.6 times more likely to suffer from the disease than those who did not drink, while those taking a moderate amount of wine each day were not considered at risk.

Dr Choi said that beer was more likely to cause problems than spirits and wine, even though its alcohol content was lower. “These findings suggest that certain non-alcoholic components that vary across alcoholic beverages play an important role in the incidence of gout,” she said.

Dr Choi said that a likely non-alcoholic factor was the level of purines — a chemical which breaks down into uric acid — found in drink and food.

“Beer is the only alcoholic beverage acknowledged to have a large purine content,” she said. “The effect of ingested purine in beer on uric acid in blood might be sufficient to augment the hyperuricaemia effect on alcohol itself, producing a greater risk of gout than spirits or wine.”

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