medwireNews: COVID-19 vaccination with inactivated virus vaccines is associated with an increased risk for flares among men with gout, and colchicine prophylaxis may help reduce this risk, researchers report.
Changgui Li (The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, China) and colleagues’ study included 549 people with gout (96.7% men, median age 39 years), 462 of whom received an inactivated virus COVID-19 vaccine. In all, 43.9% of vaccinated individuals experienced gout flares in the 3 months following vaccination, most commonly in the first month after receipt of their first or second dose.
Multivariate analysis demonstrated that vaccination was associated with a significantly increased risk for gout flare, with an odds ratio (OR) of 6.02 after adjustment for factors including age, BMI, and prevaccination serum urate levels.
Nevertheless, the 114 individuals who took colchicine 0.5 g once or twice daily for at least 1 month at any time during the vaccination period had a “markedly reduced” risk for flare relative to those who did not (adjusted OR=0.53), report Li et al in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
“This study may inform discussions with patients with gout about the risks of gout flare around the time of COVID-19 vaccination,” say the researchers.
They caution that their findings may not apply to other types of COVID-19 vaccine, which “need to be studied for validation, ideally prospectively and with multicentre collaboration.”
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Ltd. © 2022 Springer Healthcare Ltd, part of the Springer Nature Group
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