Diet, alcohol, and gout: how do we advise patients given recent developments?

The disease burden of gout remains substantial and may be increasing as a result of trends in demographics and lifestyles. Recent scientific data serve to illuminate the links between dietary and other factors and risk for gout. These lifestyle factors affect not only the risk for gout, but also are risk factors for other chronic diseases of public health importance. Accordingly, dietary and lifestyle recommendations related to gout should consider their effect on many diseases beyond gout. These recommendations should reinforce established recommendations where the influence on gout parallels the influence on other diseases, and consider modifying the recommendations where they are divergent.