Description: Four or more cups of coffee a day may help keep the gout away, suggests a study in the June issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Gout, the most common form of inflammatory arthritis in adult males, is caused by too much uric acid in the joints.

In this study, American and Canadian researchers tracked almost 46,000 men for 12 years. The men were ages 40 to 75 at the start of the study and had no history of gout.

The researchers found that men who drank six or more cups of coffee a day were 59 percent less likely to develop gout than those who never drank coffee, while the risk was 40 percent lower for men who drank four to five cups a day.

The findings were independent of all other risk factors for gout.

Decaffeinated coffee offered somewhat less protection against gout. Tea drinking and total caffeine consumption did not have an effect on the incidence of gout.

The findings suggest that components of coffee other than caffe