Persistent clinical inertia in gout in 2014: An observational French longitudinal patient database study

To describe the characteristics and management of patients with gout in France during the year 2014. Data were obtained from a computerized observational longitudinal patient database of a representative sample of 1200 general practitioners. Patients on urate-lowering treatment and/or colchicine were described by demographics and comorbidities, quality of management indicators (serum uric acid and renal function testing) and treatment (type of urate-lowering treatment, change and dose regimen). We identified 14,400 patients (84.4% men, mean age: 67.5 years) with gout in the database. The most frequent comorbidities were hypertension (70%), dyslipidemia (51%), diabetes (24%) and obesity (23%). The proportion with uric acid and renal function testing data was 32% and 29%, respectively. In gout patients, only 39% had a serum uric acid