Serum urate concentrations in the Australian aboriginal.

Studies of indigenous Pacific peoples have often revealed populations with a high incidence of gout or with mean serum urate concentrations significantly higher than Caucasian populations. These have included the Maoris ofNew Zealand (Rose and Prior, 1963), Filipinos in Hawaii and Alaska (Decker, Lane, and Reynolds, 1962; Healey, Caner, and Decker, 1966a), the Chamorros and Carolinians of the Mariana Islands (Burch, O'Brien, Need, and Kurland, 1966), and occasionally some groups of Chinese (Tsung-Po, 1964) or Malaysians (Burns-Cox, 1964). Other Pacific peoples, such as full-blood Hawaiians and national groups of Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Caucasians living in Hawaii (Healey and others, 1966a; Healey, Caner, Bassett, and Decker, 1966b), as well as the North American Indians (O'Brien, Burch, and Bunim, 1966), have been shown to have serum urate levels comparable with very large groups of Caucasians in the United States of America. Limited surveys of Australians of European origin had suggested that their serum urate concentrations were comparable with those in Europe and North America (Emmerson and Sandilands, 1963), but no information in this regard was available concerning the serum urate concentrations in the Australian Aborigines. The Aboriginal race is a primitive one, anthropologically distinct from all other races. There is controversy about their origin in that some regard them as comprising a single homogeneous people (Abbie, 1966) while others consider that they have a biracial origin (Morrison, 1967). All agree, however, that the original migration was into north western Australia through the islands of Indonesia. The Aborigines are less pigmented than most other coloured peoples and have a fairly characteristic facial appearance (Fig. 1). In the natural state, the Aborigines are nomads, living on nature as they find it, without permanent housing, agriculture, or Fig. 1.-Typical Aboriginal face.