Urate oxidase (Uox) catalyses the first reaction of oxidative uricolysis, a three-step enzymatic pathway that allows some animals to eliminate purine nitrogen through a water-soluble compound. Inactivation of the pathway in hominoids leads to elevated levels of sparingly soluble urate and puts humans at risk of hyperuricemia and gout. The uricolytic activities lost during evolution can be repla...

OBJECTIVE The apolipoprotein AI-CIII-AIV cluster has been associated with the response to a urate-lowering diet, and polymorphisms in the apolipoprotein CIII gene have been associated with hyperuricemia and hypertriglyceridemia. We assessed the influence of polymorphisms in the apolipoprotein AI-CIII-AIV cluster on the response to a urate-lowering diet in patients with hyperuricemia. METHODS ...

Gout is a common rheumatic disease in humans which is characterized by elevation in serum uric acid levels, and deposition of uric acid crystals in the joint. Hyperuricaemia is the primary risk factor for the development of gout and primates have uniquely high levels of serum uric acid due to missense mutations in the uricase gene. Levels of serum uric acid are known to be highly heritable, and...

Electrochemical behaviour of copper oxides electrode in the presence of sodium urate was investigated. The correlation between the anodic oxidation and the amperometric detection of sodium urate in the alkaline medium on copper oxides electrode was analysed by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements. The intereference from sodium tartrate presence i...

Expression of Urate transporter 1 (URAT1/SLC22A12) is restricted to the proximal tubules in the kidney, where it is responsible for the tubular reabsorption of urate. To elucidate the mechanism underlying its tissue-specific expression, the transcriptional regulation of the hURAT1 and mUrat1 genes was investigated. Hepatocyte nuclear factor 1 (HNF1 ) and HNF1 positively regulate minimal promote...

Monosodium urate and tumor necrosis factor-α, are two potent mediators of separate inflammatory response pathways in arthritic joints where inflammation may be accompanied by the loss of chondrocyte vitality via apoptosis. To address this possibility in vitro, chondrocyte cultures were employed to determine the extent to which monosodium urate and recombinant TNF-α altered the frequency of apop...

Gout is the most common inflammatory arthritis in adults in the Western world. Characterized by hyperuricemia and the effects of acute and chronic inflammation in joints and bursa, gout leads to an agonizing, chronically painful arthritis. Arthritis can also be accompanied by urate nephropathy and subcutaneous urate deposits (tophi). Exciting new developments in the last decade have brought bac...

Background: Gout and its treatment pose a greater burden on patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). We review the incidence of hyperuricemia in patients with CKD, mechanism of urate handling by the kidney and management of acute and chronic gout in patients with CKD and on renal replacement therapy. Renal Handling of Urate: Reabsorption of urate is enhanced by the presence of monocarboxylat...

There has been increased interest in gout in both academic and clinical practice settings. Several reasons may explain this. The prevalence of both hyperuricemia and gout has risen in the last decades in developed countries and therefore the burden of gout has increased. The association of hyperuricemia and gout with cardiovascular outcomes and the opportunity of further benefits of interventio...

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully identified common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with a wide variety of complex diseases, but do not address gene function or establish causality of disease-associated SNPs. We recently used GWAS to identify SNPs in a genomic region on chromosome 4 that associate with serum urate levels and gout, a consequence of elevat...