New Drug May Relieve Severe, Tough-to-Treat Gout, University of Chicago Study

For some gout patients afflicted with a particularly severe, crippling form of the disease who find standard treatments either intolerable or ineffective, a recently approved alternative appears to afford relief. A new IV-infused treatment called pegloticase (brand name Krystexxa) has no lasting effect on most severe gout patients, but researchers say that for the roughly four in 10 patients who do respond positively, the improvement can be significant. Use of pegloticase was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in September 2010. However, the treatment is expensive and the study found a high rate of side effects, some extremely serious, suggesting that health providers have to weigh the costs and benefits on a case by case basis.

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