Familial mediterranean fever: a status report.

The recent discovery that an age-old drug, colchicine, can control this enigmatic, often unrecognized, recurrent disease means that most affected individuals can now lead virtually normal lives. The research leading to this advance is described, as are the essentials of diagnosis, colchicine's possible mechanisms of action, and the relative merits of chronic vs intermittent colchicine therapy in the abortion of impending attacks.