Study of Serum Uric Acid in Essential Hypertension

BACKGROUND: Uric acid, which serves no biochemical function other than being an end product of purine metabolism, was first discovered in 1776. A Swedish chemist Scheele isolated it from a urinary tract stone. In 1797, a British chemist Wallaston detected uric acid in a tophus which was removed from his own ear. About 50 years later Alfred Baring Garrod, a British physician showed by chemical isolation that uric acid was abnormally high in gouty patients. In subsequent studies Garrod formulated a rational relationship between hyperuricemia and symptomatology of gouty patients. Association between hypertension and hyperuricemia was recognized when a family with a unique and unfortunate pedigree attended Hammer Smith hospital in 1957. The father and six of the seven siblings had hyperuricemia, while the mother and all the siblings had hypertension. This raised the question whether a raised serum uric acid was common in patients with hypertension.