That appears to be a correct summary of the current situation. More here, including how it came about:
http://www.townsendletter.com/June2011/gaby0611.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18563_162-20118283.html
The FDA’s hands were not completely tied by federal legbislation – they appear to have had some discretion in their rulings. This is an outrageous turn of affairs.
Right.
Oddly enough, Colcrys has no effect at all on my husband’s gout, but generic colchicine alleviates it within a day. $0.48/pill, plus shipping.
I’m confused by this post:
1.) Colcrys, from the cites above is identical with “generic colchicine”. The biggest complaint people have is that it’s the same medicine, just with the price jacked up by a factor of 50. Some people have claimed that the dosage is halved, too. If so, maybe that’s your problem.
2.) The other complaint is that the makers of Colcrys have instigated lawsuits against makers of generic colchicine, so that they’ve cstopped making the stuff. This is the other complaint – they have been givejn a monopoly and have gone out of their way to drive the generics out of the market. So how are you even getting generic colchicine?
They are not exactly identical, as I understand it. The process may work like this: drug company identifies an old drug grandfathered by the FDA for a diagnosis, but not tested for efficacy, drug company adds a molecule or two to the formulation, gets FDA approval for “their” formulation for said diagnosis, then forces the FDA to abide by it’s own rules to stop all other manufacturers from selling the “old” drug for that diagnosis (they are not FDA approved).
needscoffee says they are getting generic colchicine from Canada.
That’s not what the news reports say – they say that Colcrys is precisely the same as generic colchicine – no tampering of any sort. Hence the outrage – they’re charging an outrageous markup for the identical product.
I didn’t notice that needscoffee was the same poster saying she got it from Canada.
I went to an urgent care with what I believed was a fractured ankle. It felt more like a million fractures actually. It was Gout. I was prescribed Colchicine, given a shot and sent home. Early the next morning my Internist’s office called and told me to not take the Colchinine. I have no idea why.
I’ve beebn checking the references. Nothing indicates any change has taken place – in fact, URL Pharma’s testing of a long-used and successfuil drug would be most likely to take place with a completely unaltered drug, rather than introducing changes that might have a deleterious effect. URL’s objection to people calling the drug from other sources “generic colchicine” seems to be completely rooted in a legalistic interpretation of the meaning of “generic” as an FDA-approved product. Colchicine was never approved by the FDA because it was in use long before there was an FDA. URL’s chief action seems to be in reducing the dose. URL also emphasizes that “unapproved colchicine” might not be consistent in purity and concentration, but never suggest or imply any difference in formulation.
Indomethacine does the trick for me also.
However, I recently had a bout of shingles on the back of my head.
Lasted two weeks before I finally got some pain pills that helped.
I was this close to jumping of a building.
A succint recap:
New England Journal of Medicine on the topic:
Statement from a physicuian, from back when URL had “only” jacked the price up by a factor of 15, rather than 50:
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/04/14/colchicines_price_goes_through_the_roof.php
Here’s something interesting and recent. olcrys is evidently the chief moneymaker for URL. And URL is being sought by Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda, which sells most of its drugs in the US:
We wish we knew why Colcrys has little to no effect and generic colchicine works so well and so fast. The dosage is a standard .6 mg.
There is another thread from a few weeks ago about this same monopolistic situation with regards to another previously-common medication, where the price was jacked up 100x and pharmacists are no longer supposed to compound it themselves: KV Pharma - A royal screwing w/o vaseline - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board
Apparently similar “monopoly” rulings have occurred with nitroglycerine pills and the active ingredient in Mucinex:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42844506/how-the-fdas-crackdown-on-unapproved-drugs-could-create-new-monopolies/
Maybe URL saw the handwriting on the wall and jumped in before anyone else could claim a monopoly?
All of these cases are outrageous, going around a multiple-decades-old “grandfather” arrangement.
But this all seems to stem from a 2007 FDA initiative to finally do something about those “unapproved” “grandfathered” drugs.
Your FDA – indirectly driving up costs for your benefit.
Not to derail this Gout discussion any further, but you may have heard of quinine, the anti-malarial drug that has also been around for ages. It was “branded” with the same strategy by AR Scientific which, you guessed it, is a division of URL Pharma…
From a different link: “Qualaquin is the brand name for the drug quinine sulfate. Made and sold by AR Scientific, a unit of URL Pharma, this prescription medication is sold in capsules containing 324mg of quinine. In August 2005, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Qualaquin “orphan drug” status, meaning AR Scientific received a monopoly to sell the drug exclusively for seven years. Quinine has a 400-year history as an anti-malarial drug.”
I am currently experincing a gout attack in my left foot. I am utterly grateful that, this time, it’s in my pinky toe.
I can still put my weight on my heel and big toe, and still walk. The last time, it was my big toe. The following is no exaggeration: After working and hobbling for 8 hrs. in my heavy steel toed woorkboots, I came home and became barefoot as quickly and gently as possible. I stood on my cool garage floor, with a shovel in my hand imagining that with one quick chop, my foot would betray me no more. I don’t usually complain of pain, but good God, gout hurts like a mo-fo!
I joke with my podiatrist about it, but we agree that if he did chop off my feet I would be in the small percentage of people who gets phantom limb pain :smack:
If it was me, I would immediately start chugging buckets of cold water, eating fistfuls of ibuprofen (well, as many as you can safely stomach) and then look into some cherry juice extract in the morning…
(It’s not perfect, but barring access to the proper Rx drugs, probably the best thing you can do for the time being)
Even a doc in a box can prescribe colchicine and indocin [my current starter go to, I can usually beat down a CPPD flare if I hit it as soon as I get that tickle in my feet]
This is awful. I never knew much about gout, and still don’t, but I am now reading up about it because my 76 year old father evidently has it. He’s complained for a 2 or 3 years about intermittent pain in his left leg - his calf swells up and becomes all red. He takes meds when this happens and it goes away after a little while. He hasn’t mentioned being in constant pain during these attacks, just that he doesn’t feel like walking around much and that his diet is restricted when it happens (no alcohol, primarily, and no red meat).
It flared up again last week and I took a look at the pills he was taking, it was “Colcrys” which I hadn’t heard of before. (I’d expected Prednisone or some kind of NSAID as an anti-inflammatory treatment.) Googling it revealed that what he’s been having is gout 
Your descriptions of what an attack of gout is like first hand makes me marvel at my father’s steeliness. He really has not complained much at all.
It seems this is a permanent condition, once it develops? It can only be controlled or ameliorated with medication, not cured?