Aims: Effective prevention of recurrent pericarditis remains an important yet elusive goal. Corticosteroid therapy often needs to be continued for a prolonged period and causes severe side effects. We performed a multi-centre all-case analysis to investigate the efficacy of colchicine in preventing subsequent relapses of pericarditis, and addressed the hypothesis that pretreatment with corticosteroids may attenuate the beneficial effect of colchicine.
Methods and results: One hundred and forty published and unpublished cases of patients treated with colchicine after at least two relapses of pericarditis were aggregated from European centres. Of those, 119 were included in the study group. Only 18% of the patients had relapses under colchicine therapy, and 30% after its discontinuation. There were significantly more relapses among male patients after colchicine treatment (36 vs. 17%, P=0.046), and those with previous corticosteroid treatment (43 vs. 13%, P=0.02). Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified previous corticosteroid therapy (OR 6.68, 95% CI: 1.65-27.02) and male gender (OR 4.20, 95% CI: 1.16-15.21) as independent risk factors for recurrence following colchicine therapy.
Conclusion: Treatment with colchicine is highly effective in preventing recurrent pericarditis, while pretreatment with corticosteroids exacerbates and extends the course of recurrent pericarditis.