gout

(Newser) - Kim Jong Un hasn't been seen in public since Sept. 3, even missing the year's second session of its rubber-stamp parliament yesterday, and North Korea today explained why, albeit vaguely. The 31-year-old is "suffering discomfort," according to state media, in what Reuters terms the "first...

(Newser) - It's the condition that tormented Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, King Henry VIII, and Benjamin Franklin, and today increasingly afflicts regular Americans: gout. The painful inflammatory condition, caused by elevated levels of uric acid in the blood, may seem retro, but thanks to fructose-sweetened soft drinks, purine-rich foods, and general...

(Newser) - It used to be called the “disease of kings” because only aristocrats could pig out enough to get it. But these days, gout, an extremely painful arthritis of the foot and other joints, is spreading like wildfire through America’s ever-widening middle class, the New York Times reports. Drug...