NO ONE TO BLAME BUT OURSELVES, FELLAS:

Study: Alcohol Doubles Chance of Gout (EMMA ROSS, 4/15/04, AP)

Confirming the wisdom of ages, researchers have found that drinking alcohol - particularly beer - can more than double a man's risk of developing gout.

One of humankind's most ancient diseases, the painful joint condition is the leading cause of arthritis in men. It is less common in women, occurring only after menopause.

The connection to drinking has been believed for centuries, but a study published this week in The Lancet medical journal verifies it for the first time and found that even light indulgence increases the risk.

The study found that beer was the worst choice for gout, followed by spirits. It concluded that moderate wine drinking did not appear to be a problem, but experts said there were too few men in the study who drank a lot of wine to be sure that wine is a safer alternative. [...]

The higher the daily alcohol consumption, the more likely gout was to develop, and the disease was more than twice as likely to occur in men who drank the most alcohol compared with those who drank none.

The strongest link was with beer - each daily serving increased the risk by 50 percent. For spirits, the chance of developing gout increased by 15 percent with each extra drink daily. There appeared to be no increased risk among wine drinkers, but there were only 18 men in the study who drank more than two glasses of wine a day.