Tight Control of Gouty Arthritis Compared to Usual Care

Overview

Gout is caused by a reaction to urate crystals that results in attacks of severe joint pain. Medicines that lower urate levels can prevent gout flares, however it takes time for this benefit to be felt, and paradoxically starting treatment with large doses of urate lowering treatment risks provoking attacks of gout. Medical guidelines disagree on the best way to overcome these challenges with many recommending medicine dose adjustment based on regular urate testing but a general practice guideline suggesting more simply increasing the medicine dose in those patients that continue to suffer flares. In reality most patients are not treated at all, and many of those that are treated never receive an effective dose of treatment. We have developed a supported self-management approach to gout in which patients monitor their own urate levels using a finger prick test, and then receive advice on adjusting their treatment dose to achieve target urate levels through a smartphone app (Gout SMART). A trial of this approach has shown that it results in much better control of urate levels after 6 months than usual care, and suggests that it also leads to fewer flares. We would now like to confirm that this approach is effective in reducing flares of gout over 2 years by randomising patients to either treatment-to-target urate using our self-monitoring approach, or to usual care.

A total of approximately 125 participants will be recruited. We anticipate that most participants will be identified following referral to rheumatology outpatient or on-call services in National Health Service (NHS) Lothian, or through NHS Lothian's gout liaison service. Additional patients may indicate their willingness to participate directly in response to study advertisements. Based on baseline renal function and flare frequency, an individual treatment plan will be drawn up for all participants which will set a ceiling on the maximum dose of allopurinol to be used within the trial and determine the need for flare prophylaxis with colchicine. Participants will be randomized to the intervention group in a 1:1 ratio, with stratification by the need for use of flare prophylaxis. All participants will have a smart phone application (GoutSMART) uploaded to their smart phones. Usual care participants will have a limited version of the GoutSMART application installed which includes background information about gout and provides a means for participants to maintain diaries of gout flares. Subjects in the usual care arm of the study will have treatment escalation decisions made by their GPs. Subjects in the treat-to-target arm will be taught to self-test serum urate using a BeneCheck Plus hand held device and provided with test strips. A full version of the GoutSMART application will be installed with the features mentioned above but also the facility to record a urate diary. Participants will be prompted to check their serum urate and enter the results into the GoutSMART application. Participants reporting a urate level \>0.3mmol/l will be advised to increase the dose of allopurinol incrementally as specified in their treatment plan. No change will be advised in those whose urate levels are already at target. If the patient needs to increase allopurinol there will be an automatic reminder after two weeks prompting the patients to submit updated self-test results which will be handled in the same way as described above. Conversely for participants achieving target levels this will be acknowledged and a request to resubmit readings will be sent on a monthly basis.