What is Uric Acid?
Technically the uric acid is the end product of purine nucleotide metabolism, and it contains carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. By eating a lot o meat for example, especially red meat, the uric acid level grows in the body and it can become a serious problem after reaching certain limits. The risk resides in its characteristic of being virtually water-insoluble and humans have little means to convert it into a more soluble compound.
As a result some very serious kidney diseases can occur, as the blood flow is greatly decreased and acute renal failure can occur. Uric acid exists in the ionized form as urate, which is filtrated by the kidneys at the glomerulus, but when the level of acid uric is too high, the kidneys become unable to deal with the workload.
A very painful illness caused by the excess of uric acid is the Gout, which occurs when serum accumulations of uric acid create some crystals in joints and capillaries. This condition is a severe case of arthritis and its side effects include much more than extreme pain and reduced movement capability. Patients suffering of gout will frequently develop kidney stones, which must be diagnosed by ultrasounds as they don’t appear on regular X-Ray or CT Scan.
Uric acid in excess can also trigger cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders and diabetes, although for the latter there are no definitive studies to determine the clear link. In rare cases the high level uric acid can cause the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, which produces unintentional movement, cognitive retardation and spasticity.