Acute polyarticular gout.

We report here on 41 male patients with acute polyarticular gout seen in 3 years. Acute polyarticular gout continues to masquerade as other commoner rheumatological disorders such as septic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, degenerative joint disease, and even hemiparesis. Almost all of these patients had clues to the diagnosis of acute gout in their medical history. These clues included a past history of intermittent acute gout, prior attacks of polyarticular arthritis, previous hyperuricaemia, and/or obvious tophi. The patients all responded promptly to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. We observed serious toxic drug reactions in 8 patients.