Effect of Dietary Counseling on Patients with Asymptomatic Hyperuricemia.

In Japan, hyperuricemia is on the rise. The guideline for the management of hyperuricemia and gout recommends lifestyle changes before beginning drug therapy. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of dietary counseling following the guideline. Thirty-three subjects (24 men and 9 women) with asymptomatic hyperuricemia underwent dietary counseling for 6 months based on the following recommendations : (1) prevent excessive purine intake, (2) prevent excessive fructose intake, (3) limit alcohol drinking, and (4) drink sufficient water. Obese subjects were counseled on adequate energy intake. Blood sampling, anthropometric measurements, dietary surveys, and 24-h urine collection were performed at baseline and at 6 months. Serum uric acid (S-UA) levels were significantly lower at 6 months compared to baseline. Water intake and urine volume were considerably higher at 6 months than at baseline. When compared to baseline, urine UA (U-UA) levels were significantly lower, and renal fractional excretion of UA (FEUA) was significantly higher at 6 months. Changes in renal function (serum creatinine, estimated glomerular filtration rate, and FEUA) were significantly associated with ?S-UA level. In this study, S-UA level was significantly decreased by dietary counseling in line with the guideline. This study illustrates the effectiveness of dietary counseling for asymptomatic hyperuricemia. J. Med. Invest. 70 : 34-40, February, 2023.

Separate estimation of long- and short-term systolic blood pressure variability from photoplethysmograph.

This paper proposed a method to monitor systolic blood pressure (BP) variability without using a cuff during the daytime. In this method, BP variability of long-term and short-term were separated and estimated respectively from features of phoplethysmograph (PPG) through the use of a frequency filter. Then, total variability was obtained from the combination of long-term and short-term. BP by using a cuff (ground truth) and PPG of nine healthy young subjects were measured during the daytime; then BP variability was estimated from PPG to verify the validity of our method. As a result, the correlation coefficients between measured BP variability and estimated BP variability was improved from r = 0.35 in previous method to r = 0.41 in proposed method. In particular, the estimation results in short-term BP variability showed good accuracy (r = 0.67). This method of estimating BP variability has the potential to be a simple and continuous BP monitoring system during the daytime.