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High Levels of Vitamin C May Prevent Gout in Men, Study Says

A new study by a researcher at the Boston University School of Medicine says that high levels of Vitamin C may prevent gout in men.

Gout is a type of arthritis that causes painful swelling and stiffness in joints, most commonly the big toe. It affects men more than women, and it's caused by too much uric acid in the blood. Vitamin C can reduce uric acid levels, and the BU study of almost 47,000 men over twenty years found that the more Vitamin C the men consumed, the less likely they were to get gout.

But BU medical professor Hyon Choi, the study's lead author, says just drinking some extra orange juice probably won't be enough to keep gout away. That's because some of the men in the study were getting more than ten times the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C.

So Choi says you'd probably have to get Vitamin C from supplements if you want to consume enough of it to try to prevent gout. The study appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

This program aired on March 10, 2009. The audio for this program is not available.

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