ABSTRACT
Objective
Gouty arthritis and familial Mediterranean fever share some clinical and pathological features such as being classified as auto-inflammatory disease, association with inflammasome, short-lived intermittent arthritis, and good response to colchicine and anti-interleukin-1 treatments. As Mediterranean fever gene is the causative factor of familial Mediterranean fever, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of Mediterranean fever gene mutations and their effect on disease manifestations in Turkish gouty arthritis patients.
Methods
Ninety-seven patients diagnosed with primary gouty arthritis (93 M and 4 F, 54 [37–84] years) and 100 healthy controls (94 M and 6 F, 57 [37–86] years) were included in the study. All subjects were genotyped for the Mediterranean fever gene variations. Number of gout attacks, diuretic use, history of nephrolithiasis and presence of tophus were also recorded.
Results
The carriage rate of Mediterranean fever mutations for patients and controls was 22.7% (n = 22) and 24% (n = 24), respectively. The comparison of the patient and control groups yielded no significant difference in terms of the Mediterranean fever mutations’ carriage rate (p = 0.87). The allelic frequencies of the Mediterranean fever mutations in patients were 11.9% (n = 23) and 14% (n = 28) in controls (p = 0.55). The presence of Mediterranean fever variants did not show any association with clinical features of gouty arthritis. The subgroup analysis of patients revealed that gouty arthritis patients with mutations had similar frequencies of tophus, history of nephrolithiasis and podagra compared to the ones without mutations (p > 0.05).
Conclusions
This study does not provide support for a major role of Mediterranean fever mutations in Turkish gouty arthritis patients.
Keywords:
Gouty arthritis; MEFV protein; Familial Mediterranean fever