For years the only palliative for gout was a drug called colchicine, which was used even by the ancient Egyptians. They extracted it from the saffron plant, or autumn crocus. The trouble with colchicine is that while it alleviates acute attacks, it also can produce unpleasant side effects. Modem treatment for gout consists of getting at the root—the uric acid surplus in the blood. Normal people have a concentration of 6 to 65 milligram percent; gout victims - have from 9 to 12 milligram percent or more. Uric acid crystals tend to deposit in various joints and the kidneys if not properly treated. Such deposits are 'tailed tophi. Tophi formed at the joints can be very unsightly and crippling.
Uric acid deposits in the kidneys sometimes may lead to kidney insufficiency. In 1950 the Gout Clinic, using a drug called probenecid, which helps gout victims by drawing uric acid out through their kidneys, found that tophi could actually be made to disappear a major breakthrough in treatment In 1962 another drug, allopurinol, was developed, which actually prevents the formation of uric acid. Gout Clinic patients today are given whichever drug fits their particular case best, and they're usually permitted to eat and drink pretty much as they please. They do have to undergo periodic checkups of their uric acid levels, so that diet and pill dosage may be properly regulated. Dr. Yu points out that women seldom get gout about 95 percent of sufferers are men. She also notes that people with gout are believed by some to have above average intelligence. "How does Women's Lib feel about that?" she asks J Smith a smile.
Gout-is a hereditary" disease, with offspring of gouty patients far more likely than others to develop a high uric acid concentration. She says that about 100 of her patients bring their children in for preventive checkups. Hopefully research will be able to develop treatments which will prevent such offspring from developing the actual disease;. The generations pass "Some of these youngsters started at age 12, and they're still coming at age 30," she says. "I have to laugh at myself sometimes. When I was young I saw only old fellows. Now when much older, I see them young." Dr. Yu, a graduate of Peking Union Medical. College, began studying medicine largely at the instigation of her father. "In those days in China, boys were preferred to girls," she says. "But I had a good father—he didn't see why boys should be better treated. We were two girls and three boys. The others were all smarter than me, so I worked harder to compensate." Wherfshe first met Dr. Gutman, who then was at Columbia University,
Dr. Yu remembers he was "totally unprepared to receive a Chinese girl to work with him." "He gave me two reprints that he'd written," she says, "and said 'Read these articles—I don't know whether you'll understand them or not.' I felt insulted. I read his articles, which were written in a beautiful literary style. But he was right: I didn't understand them. But I didn't want to admit it. So I spent a whole week looking up references and going over the articles. Finally I went in and told him: 'Everything you wrote I understand.' I stayed three and a half years with him at Columbia, and then when he was appointed medical chief at Mount Sinai ,he took me with him. It was he who urged me to stay in gout research." World's largest Over the years the Gout Clinic launched by Dr. Gutman with the help of Dr. Yu has had 1700 patients, making it by far the largest "clinic of its kind in the world. Scientists from other countries come to study and work there and then take back the most modem treatment methods to their own lands. Gout patients who used to hobble in with canes and crutches now arrive briskly and cheerfully for the tests and treatments that enable them to lead active, pain-free lives. Their new-fourtd happiness is reflected in the quiet satisfaction of Dr. Yu, whose "three months of graduate work" has turned into a quarter of a century of service to humanity.
From Lincoln Star (1950)
