I’ve just spotted an interesting news item about colchicine and the risk of heart attack.

The news reported in The Australian Hub describes a study in Perth Australia, that is being presented to the American Heart Association sessions in Los Angeles today.

The doctors were struck by the same phenomenon that has spiked my interest from time to time. If heart attacks are associated with massive inflammation, would colchicine help. I’ve never had the resources to test such a theory, but the doctors who ran this investigation did. Very good of them to confirm my theory.

I’m very interested to see exactly what dose is effective, and if they have revisited the known risks of long-term colchicine at gout doses. Nice to see they’ve dubbed low dose colchicine with a ripper Aussie LoDoCo label. I will summarize the original research in my colchicine guidelines, but in the meantime, here’s some cool irony for Americans.

The news article describes some of the study details, and notes that there are many different ways to target the inflammatory process. They refer to new drugs in development but note that they could take a long time to develop. They claim the benefits for using low dose colchicine for reducing heart attack risks are twofold.

First, colchicine is well established, so there is no waiting time to adopt colchicine for heart disease control, other than the usual licensed usage requirements.

Secondly, and here comes the bit all Americans reduced to poverty by Colcrys will laugh at, colchicine is, according to the news report “relatively inexpensive”

Dr Thompson says the study could be doubly significant because Colchicine is a low cost, readily available product already on the market

Will old generic colchicine manufacturers be able to resume manufacture of LoDoCo pills to save hearts? Or is heart attack risk only halved for the wealthy?