Gout News

The FDA has added a new boxed warning to febuxostat due an increased risk of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality compared with allopurinol, according to a recent safety announcement.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Clinicians know that patients can vary widely by onset, location and serum uric acid levels, but reason for the variance can still be puzzling, according to an expert here at the annual Basic and Clinical Immunology for the Busy Clinician symposium.

Patients with tophaceous gout who were unable to achieve serum urate targets with febuxostat alone later maintained lower serum urate levels for 2 years when prescribed combination therapy of lesinurad and febuxostat, according to recent findings.

Despite the significant prevalence of gout in the United States, only one-third of patients are receiving urate-lowering therapy, according to data published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.

Splashy headlines in the mainstream media that proclaim advances in medicine are often not what they seem. That may be the case with a recent series of FDA approvals surrounding the direct-to-consumer genetic testing platform, 23andMe.

Pegloticase quickly resolved tophi among patients with gout who responded to the treatment, according to data published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.

A joint panel of the FDA’s Arthritis Advisory Committee and Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee voted 19-2 with one abstention that patient populations exist in which the benefits of the gout drug febuxostat outweigh the CV risk.

Researchers using ultrasound were able to detect bone erosions in 44% of patients with gout, with 78.4% of erosions occurring at the first metatarsophalangeal joints, according to data published in Arthritis Care & Research.

CHICAGO — Patients with gout who fail to reach a serum urate target level of 6 mg/dL have a higher risk for death, according to Fernando Perez Ruiz, MD, PhD, of the BioCruces Health Research Institute in Spain.

CHICAGO — All-cause hospitalization increased 410% among patients with gout during the last 22 years, nearly 100 times more than the overall population in the United States, according to findings presented during the ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting.