Gout's Silver Lining: A Lower Risk of Alzheimer's?
Study found people with the arthritic ailment had lower odds for dementia, but more research is needed
What is it about gout and uric acid that lowers Alzheimer's risk? Choi said that at this point he can only theorize.
"The primary speculation is that uric acid is an effective scavenger of oxidative stress materials, which can be destructive in cells," he said. "So it could be the anti-oxidative property of uric acid that plays a role."
But Dr. John Hardin, a professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, has a different theory.
He said that "the body already has a huge number of mechanisms to protect us from oxidative injury," so the role of uric acid in that area is probably small.
Instead, Hardin puts more stock in the notion that a genetic predisposition towards developing gout may come in tandem with a genetic predisposition towards not developing Alzheimer's.
"There is a genetic component to gout and also for at least some types of Alzheimer's," Hardin said. "So it could simply be that if you inherit gout genes, you don't get Alzheimer's genes. There are plenty of examples of this type of thing -- [for example,] sickle cell disease makes you resistant to malaria."
As for Choi, he stressed that more study is needed. "We will still need more research to confirm our finding concerning Alzheimer's, before we can consider the connection solid and useful," he said.