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An animated, cited guide for students and patients. Educational only, not medical advice. Your place is saved on this device.

Not medical adviceGout Companion is an educational synthesis of published literature for study and patient understanding. It does not replace a clinician. Doses and guideline statements are reported as published, not as instructions for any individual.

Part 2 · Treating a flare

Colchicine inside the cell

Colchicine, from the autumn crocus, is one of three first-line drugs for a gout flare. Follow one dose from the mouth into a white cell, where it takes apart the microtubule scaffolding that the crystal alarm needs. Seven scenes, one timeline.

Schematic, not to scale.

Related guide: colchicine is approved for gout and for familial Mediterranean fever (FMF), and gout is its best-established rheumatic use. 369 The FMF Companion follows the same dose into a neutrophil in that disease, where a different inflammasome is involved.

How sure are we about the mechanism?

Gout Companion is an educational synthesis of the published literature on gout, made for health-science study and for patient understanding.

It is not medical advice. It cannot diagnose, and nothing here should change a treatment without your own clinician. Guideline doses are quoted as published. Please check the original sources, which are listed in full in the Sources module.

Part of Medical Companions, animated and cited guides to one disease each. Also there: FMF Companion, whose colchicine and inflammasome modules this guide builds on, and Alzheimer's Companion.