AWARENESS AND ATTITUDE OF EGYPTIAN POPULATION TOWARDS GOUT

Although gout is a common rheumatic disease with worldwide prevalence of about 1.3%, mal-awareness might impact the disease control and especially the patient's compliance with urate lowering therapies. The aim of this research is to study the level of awareness, attitude, and misconceptions among the Egyptian population towards gout and compare between levels of awareness and different demographic factors. In this cross-sectional study, 1200 participants (18-60 years) were randomly enrolled (53.8% were females). A prepared validated questionnaire was used for data collection about the knowledge, attitude, and misconceptions towards gout and its risk factors and possible complications. The relation between socio-demographic factors of participants and their level of awareness was calculated using chi-square test. After demographic data collection, the entry question of the survey was; do you know a disease called gout? Only the responders with "yes" were the target of the evaluation by completing the questionnaire. In this study, data was collected from 1200 adult participants, the socio-demographic characteristics show that 706 (58.8%) were females while 494 (41.2%) were males. participants who had previous information about gout were 632 (52.7%) while 568 (47.3%) don't know gout. There was a high statistically significant difference between participants who know and those who don't know gout as regard to education, occupation, marital status and residence (p value = 0.000, 0.000, 0.037 and 0.000 respectively). Regarding to complications of gout, 230 (36.9%) of the participants know that gout can lead to kidney disease while only 30 (4.8%) think it does not with high statistically significant difference between participants regarding gender (p value= 0.001). The level of awareness about gout was insufficient among the general population in Egypt. There was a significant relation between gender, age, marital status and the level of awareness. Considering plantar fasciitis as a frequent clinical presentation of gout is a common misconception among Egyptians. Awareness campaigns on gout should be organized and encouraged by the health authorities.