In previous research, smoking has been found to be negatively correlated with serum uric acid levels by virtue of reduced production and increased consumption of endogenous antioxidant uric acid among smokers and has been reported to decrease incidence of gout. In order to shed further light on the question of association between active smoking and acute gout, researchers recently examined this association using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample data from 2009 to 2011. A total of 17,847,045 discharge records were used which included 13,932 (0.08 %) inhospital acute gouty arthritis patients and 2,615,944 (14.66 %) active smokers. They found:

• Active tobacco use was associated with a lower risk of acute inpatient gouty arthritis, even when controlling for conventional risk factors.

• Both univariate and multivariate regressions showed statistically significant reduction of acute gout among hospitalized patients who were current smokers but were assumed to have ceased smoking during hospital stay.