Giving up wine, is it really nessesary for gout sufferers?

Myself is not really a wine drinker. Actually I don't like any alcohol. However, my husband occasionally does like to drink a little bit wine. Ever since he got a couple of serious gout attack, I started the research on gout, trying to find a way to cure or at least contain it.

There are some research on the relationship between alcohol and gout. Though they are often inconclusive but somehow persuasive on the negative effect on gout. Particularly beer, since not only it contains alcohol but also contains purine. I read an article in Bandolier, an independent journal about evidence-based health care. It mentions an experiment conducted on 10 healthy men divided into two groups: non-alcohol consumer and regular alcohol drinker. All men were given oral alcohol and their blood samples were taken after 4 hours. It turns out that uric acid level rose 40 µmol/L after 180 min for regular drinker but no difference for abstainers. Even though the experiment only for 10 people and none of them has gout, it is still showing some quantitative evidence.

As for wine, the only direct research and people often refer to was the one published in 2004. The researchers followed 47,150 men aged 40 to 75 over 12 years, looking at their drinking habits (how many grams of alcohol they consumed per day). None of the men had gout in the beginning. The researchers documented 730 confirmed incident cases of gout among the men by Year 12.  Compared with men who did not drink alcohol, the risk of developing gout increased with the amount of alcohol that the person was consuming. (Choi, et al, April, 2004). However,  there did not appear to be an association between drinking two 4 oz.  glasses of wine a day and developing gout, regardless of whether the men were drinking red or white wine. Yet it is acknowledged that port, some red wines and stouts contain purines or oxypurines, which lead to an increased purine load.

Since there are not much scientific research on the effect of wine, particularly there has no real research on how drinking wine can affect people already had or are having gout attack. Can it trigger an attack? I turn to various gout forum to seek my answer. Sometimes the best information come from the people who are suffering from the problem because people will try all sort of ways to reduce the pain, often make harder effort than their doctors.

After reading and reading from the forum on this particular topic, I have the impression that red wine seems to cause more trouble than white wine. Many people said that they got attack right after drinking red wine. And I did not read too many people had the same experience with white wine. Even one person thought a white wine daily actually made him feel better. Another person thought red wine caused his attack 3 on 3 while the white wine seemed fine.

Though it is purely observation based, at this point, my conclusion is that: try not to drink alcohol, but if you have to, maybe try a glass of white wine.