Question

Gout is a disorder of:

• A. Purine metabolism
• B. Pyrimidine metabolism
• C. Ketone metabolism
• D. Protein metabolism

Hint:

Uric acid is the end product of purine breakdown, and allopurinol acts in that same pathway.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

Trace the chemistry that ends in a gout attack. The crystals that inflame the joint are monosodium urate, so the real question is where uric acid comes from.

Uric acid is the final waste product when the body breaks down purine bases, namely adenine and guanine. They are converted to hypoxanthine and xanthine, and xanthine oxidase then turns xanthine into uric acid. When this purine handling goes wrong, by overproduction or poor renal clearance, urate accumulates and gout follows. That places gout squarely within purine metabolism, option A.

The drug logic confirms it: allopurinol blocks xanthine oxidase in this very pathway and lowers urate.

Now dismiss the rest. Pyrimidine breakdown yields beta-alanine and ammonia, not urate, so option B is wrong. Ketone metabolism is about fatty acid derived ketone bodies, unrelated, so option C is wrong. General protein and amino acid metabolism feeds the urea cycle, not the urate pathway, so option D is wrong.
\[\boxed{\text{Purine metabolism}}\]