NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – For acute gout flare, a 1-hour low-dose oral colchicine regimen offers comparable efficacy and better tolerability than the more common 6-hour high-dose regimen, results of a controlled study indicate.

Despite widespread use, the evidence base for oral colchicine therapy and dosing in acute gout “remains limited,” Dr. Robert A. Terkeltaub of the University of California, San Diego and colleagues point out in a January 21st online publication in Arthritis & Rheumatism.

This led them to conduct the Acute Gout Flare Receiving Colchicine Evaluation (AGREE) study, which compared low- and high-dose oral colchicine using a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled design. In the self-administered high-dose prolonged regimen,