• Spyridon Deftereos, Georgios Giannopoulos, Nikolaos Papoutsidakis, Vasiliki Panagopoulou, Charalampos Kossyvakis, Konstantinos Raisakis, Michael W Cleman, and Christodoulos Stefanadis.
• Department of Cardiology, Athens General Hospital "G. Gennimatas", Athens, Greece; Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
• J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. 2013 Nov 12; 62 (20): 1817-25.

AbstractColchicine, a natural and ancient drug still used today, is traditionally considered the staple therapy for gout and a second-line treatment for pericarditis, as well as a basic part of familial Mediterranean fever and Behcet's disease management. It is commonly classified as an anti-inflammatory agent, although its mechanism of action does not involve the arachidonic acid pathway affected by non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs and glucocorticoids. Colchicine inhibits microtubule polymerization by binding to tubulin, thus affecting any process that requires cytoskeletal changes, including cell mitosis and neutrophil motility. Recent studies suggest that colchicine may prove to be useful in a much wider spectrum of cardiovascular diseases than previously suspected, rekindling the interest in this old drug. In this review we briefly present the biochemical characteristics, mechanism of action and side-effects of colchicine, as well as examine what is currently known about the promising role of colchicine in cardiovascular medicine beyond pericardial disease.Copyright © 2013 American College of Cardiology Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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