Theme 1: Improved understanding of gout and its treatment  ..it [long-term ULT use] gets rid of the crystals altogether, which is obviously the problem lies with the crystals that form.  feel good that I understand what was happening and what caused it [gout] and why they’ve done it whereas other people I know that are just under the doctor, they have no real clue,  It's easy you just take the medication [ULT] and the gout is gone. I can’t be bothered with my diet.  [After speaking with the nurse] I know things like, for instance, like this thing called purines, which obviously anything that's high in purines can cause the uric acid to build up.  I imagine it [gout] can damage the joints and I imagine [cause] some kind of kidney disease.  It's just I don’t know if you’ll ever come off the pills [ULT] (…) if your body produces too much uric acid, you’re stuck with that aren’t you. Theme 2: Increased confidence  But mostly it's the talks [with the nurse] that were helpful because dealing with people who specifically have this condition as an expertise, it's good to be able to do that, whilst the GP, he had a knowledge of it but it wasn’t sufficient to get the situation under control.  Fine, it was absolutely great, she [nurse] explained what would happen, the targets [optimum uric acid level] that we were aiming to get.  learned the right level of uric acid into the blood, yes, had to be below a certain limit, always take the pills, don’t forget and I can remember the side-effects, negative ones.  I took these little tablets [colchicine] in case I got a bout of gout again, to take those as well [as the ULTs], and [the nurse] explained what they were for and what these were for and, as I say, I was on [both] tablets when I was on the study.