Decrease in Serum Vitamin B12 Levels Under Colchicine Treatment

Abstract

Dear editor,I read with interest the article by Ozlu et al. ti-tled as “Do vitamin B12 levels needed to be evalu-ated in FMF cases having long term colchicine treatment?” published in the Annals of Paediatric Rheumatology volume, issue 2, 2012. The article reported an association between log term colchi-cine use and decrease in serum vitamin B12 levels.I would like to highlight the value of regular, close vitamin B12 evaluation with not only long term but also short term colchicine use on FMF patients.We recently did a prospective study and pub-lished in Hong Kong Journal of Paediatrics in 2011 about serum vitamin B12 status on FMF patients receiving colchicine.[1] In our study the mean duration of colchicine treatment was 2.5±2.6 years that was similar <5 years group in Ozlu’s study. The mean age were 11.7±4.5 years and 10.24±4.02 yea in our and Ozlu’s study respectively. We found serum vitamin B12 levels were as low as 240 pg/ml with compared to Ozlu’s study (390 pg/ml). 40 % of our patients became vitamin B12 deficient (vitamin B12 levels