Efficacy And Safety Evaluation Of Colchicine For The Treatment Of Pericarditis:A Meta-analysis

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to assess the efficacy and safety of colchicine for the treatment of pericarditis.METHODS: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) reporting the efficacy of colchicine in patients with pericarditis have been searched from CENTRAL,Embase, Medline, Web of Science, CBMdiSC, CNKI, VIP and the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform Search Portal, ClinicalTrials.gov, European Union Clinical Trials Register. Two reviewers independently screened the studies for eligibility, evaluated the quality and extracted the data from the eligible studies with confirmation of RCTs. Meta-analysis was done by Revman5.3, The outcome were recurrence rates, symptom relief at 72 hours and one week, adverse events, the rate of drug-withdrawal. The risk ratio (RR) with 95% CI was calculated for binary data. After heterogeneity test was done, data without heterogeneity could be pooled using fixed effect model, and those with heterogeneity could be solved by sensitivity analysis or randomized effect model.RESULTS: Finally, 5 RCTs involving 804 participants were included. Pooled analyses showed colchicine was reduced the recurrence rates of pericarditis(RR=0.49,95%CI 0.38-0.63,P<0.00001), and led to a greater chance of symptom relief at 72 hours (RR=1.41, 95%CI 1.29-1.55, P<0.00001) and one week (RR=1.48, 95%CI 1.32-1.65, P<0.00001). Moreover, the incidence of adverse events (RR=1.30, 95%CI 0.85-2.01, P=0.223) and drug-withdrawal(RR=1.64,95%CI 0.98-2.73,P=0.06) were similar in the two study groups.CONCLUSION: Based on NSAIDs, colchicine is effective and safe in the treatment of pericarditis with low incidence of side effects.