Preventing of Gouty Arthritis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Preventing of Gouty Arthritis - Essay Example This directed the need to study prophylaxis with colchicines for different durations. This article reviews the trial conducted to study different duration of colchicines for preventing recurrence of Gouty arthritis and critique the methodologies used and recommends areas of future research. Colchicine is used for prophylaxis treatment against recurrent attacks of gout. But the most suitable duration of its administration for gouty arthritis needs to be assessed. The researchers in this study have hypothesized three regimens of dosage that can be beneficial to the patients without causing any harm. All patients were treated with allopurinol to lower the level of uric acid stored in the joints and randomly divided into three groups, the dosage of drug was kept constant (1mg/day) in all the groups but the period of treatment differed in every group ranging from 3-6 months (group 1), 7-9 months (group 2),10-12 months (group 3). The study did not include a placebo group. All the groups under study belong to the same age group of people all were in their 50's also since statistics have confirmed for every 7-9 male affected there will be 1 female affected that accounts to be 3% of women, hence few women are included in the study just about 3 % in all groups. The normal upper limit of serum uric acid is 7mg/dl in men and 6 mg/dl in women. A change in uric acid level is one of the predisposing factors for recurrence of acute gouty arthritis hence all the patients selected for the study have a mean uric acid level of 8.5 (mg/dl). For detecting similarity between patients of each group they were divided to two subgroups; with recurrence of arthritis or without any episode of arthritis, and mean level of serum uric acid and age were compared using T-test the difference was insignificant. Thus the researchers have taken care of carefully dividing the groups and the groups are