Objectives To determine the presence of physical, laboratory and ultrasound (US) signs of inflammation on the affected joints, but also on the joints that in the clinical sense never showed an inflammatory reaction in the intercritical gout period.

Methods This prospective study included 43 patients (pts.) with diagnosis primary gout (20 with and 23 without acute gout attacks). The research included: demography; medical history; laboratory analyses: sedimentation of erythrocytes (ESR), C reactive proetin (CRP), and serology; physical: detect tender and swollen joint; and US examination detect synovial fluid and hypertrophy, Power Doppler (PD) signal and “double contour“ sign on the wrist, first metatarsal joint (MTP1), tibiotalar (TT) joint and knee.

Results A physical examination showed presence of 78% tender and 43% swollen joints in the group pts. with acute gout attack, but also 23% pts. had painful and 10% swollen joints in the group without acute gout attack (p<0.001). In the group with acute gout attacks the mean ESR was 32.80 mm/L, value CRP was 8.20 mg/L and leukocytes (Le) (9.09 × 10 9/L), and in the group without acute gout attacks SE was 21.60 mm/L median CRP was 6.40 mg/L and also a higher average Le (8.39 × 10 9/L). So we found that there was no statistical difference (p>0.5) in the laboratory parameters (ESR, CRP and Le) between the groups. There was also no statistically significant difference in the findings of US signs of “double contour“ (p>0.5), synovial fluid and hypertrophy(p>0.05), per group, but the presence of PD signal statistics was more often observed in a group of patients in an acute gout attack (p<0.05), table 1.

Conclusions Our results show the presence of laboratory and ultrasound indicators of joint inflammation in gouty patients at the interclinical stage as well as in patients with acute gout attack. The results of this study show that gout is a chronic inflammatory disease of low activity.

Disclosure of Interest None declared