People who suffer from arthritis may also be at a higher risk of developing gout, experts have said.
Over nine million people in the UK have arthritis, which involves inflammation of the joints and can be extremely painful.
Gout, meanwhile, is a metabolic disorder that tends to affect men between the ages of 40 and 60, and is caused by an excess of uric acid (urate) in the blood and tissues.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham conducted a study after noticing that patients with gout commonly had arthritis in the same joints.
They evaluated 164 patients at two different practices in Nottingham, all of whom had been diagnosed with gout.
After analysing 5,900 individual joint sites, they concluded that there was a strong connection between gout and the presence of osteoarthritis (OA), one of the most common forms of arthritis.
They suggest that arthritis may trigger the deposit of uric acid crystals in joints.
Publishing their findings in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, the researchers noted: "Acute attacks of gout at individual joint sites are associated with the presence of clinically assessed OA at that joint, suggesting that OA may predispose to the localised deposition of monosodium urate crystals."
People who suffer from arthritis may also be at a higher risk of developing gout, experts have said.
