Reversal of the Nephrotic Syndrome by Colchicine in Amyloidosis of Familial Mediterranean Fever

Excerpt

To the Editors: Preventive long-term treatment with colchicine (using an appropriate daily dosage) may reduce kidney damage to minimal proteinuria in patients with familial mediterranean fever, even when it is introduced in the nephrotic stage of this amyloidotic renal disease. We are writing to correct our previous statement that colchicine does not affect amyloidotic kidney disease once it has reached the nephrotic stage (1). We report three cases in which colchicine treatment reduced such kidney damage.

We treated a 40-year-old man of Jewish Sephardi origin who has had febrile attacks since the age of 6 months. In 1981, colchicine treatment,