Interested in gout

The real issues we have long term are:
1. What is our Uric Acid load above and beyond normal limits?
2. What is our present rate of uric acid excretion.
Number 1, as I have said earlier, is not something I believe any
medical service anywhere can tell you. It may be possible to develop
such a test but to my knowledge, no such test exists today. What the
medical community measures today is our serum mono-sodium urate, the
salt form of uric acid and there is no measure of the acidic form of
the uric acid in our bodies. Clearly if you have developed trophi you
have a serious problem with uric acid but short of that indicator, we
are living blind, so to speak.
Number 2, however, is something that I believe we can get a measure
for. It should be possible to develop an indicator dye, that can be
put into a paper, like the Ph paper you use to measure the acidity of
your swimming pool, or a colorametric test, like the color test of
water with indicator drops you use to determine if your pool has
enough chlorine. I would prefer the paper method but clearly a
colorametric indicator test would be more accurate. The urate level
in your urine could be measured daily, or weekly or perhaps only
monthly, but it would let us know how our system is doing at getting
rid of the uric acid we have. Moreover, after we have plotted the
levels over a period of time we would be able to understand the
fluctuations we are undergoing and it would help each of us
tremendously, in understanding what kind of treatment, if any, we
need when we are not having an attack.
Moreover, once you understand what is the "rate of urate excretion"
your body is producing, you can experiment with your diet and look at
the results, quantitatively on a daily, or even hourly basis to
determine what the effect of various things is on your urate
excretion.
For example, there are numerous references to cherries and a diet
cotaining cherries. Do cherries increase the rate of urate excretion?
It is something we can measure.
Great for the concept but now I gotta figure out how to measure it so
we can do it in the privacy of our own home.
I know such a test can be developed and the question is, are you
interested in it. It is the first concrete product idea I have had
from this research-study-pain endurance trial I have been going
through but it makes a lot of sense to me to be able to measure that
rate and also it makes sense to know what the normal ranges are and,
most importantly, what affects that rate.
I'm retired now but I decided in the shower this morning, as I
thought about this test, that I could probably get a grant somewhere
or maybe a job to develop this test. I did put together an elaborate
and extensive test system, when I did my post doctoral work at
Northwestern and this urate test should be easy to do.
This forum seems to be relatively unresponsive to suggestions, with
some notable exceptions who have e-mailed me and I do appreciate the
feedback from said notable exceptions, but I really think this is a
concept, a practice, a test, that we should all have and that we
should all do on a daily basis frist and then weekly and then monthly
Esay to say but the test doesn't exist yet...
My guess is that we may even be able to predict a gout attack and
head it off with this data. If your urate level in your urine has
been 10 units (AN ARBITRARY UNIT I DREAMED UP) and suddenly it drops
to 5 or 4 or whatever level, and it has not been there before, you
may be about to have an attack. Moreover, such a test will allow us
to regulate the amount of allopurinol we take much more precisely. If
300 mg is good for my mom, who weigs 110 pounds, why is 300mg the
correct dose for me when I weigh in at 205.
She suffers from peripheral nuropathy, a known side effect of
allopurinol, but is stubborn about her allopurinol because of her
numerous bouts with being bed ridden from gout.
Hey, you gotta know what you want to test for and why you want to do
the test before you can devise the darn test.
Smile please.
I'm looking for feedback on this idea-
A home colorametric, quantitative test of urate in urine.
Any interest...???