Chuang JP, et al. - Researchers studied data of 28,061 patients who were newly diagnosed with gout from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, in order to ascertain colorectal cancer (CRC) risks in these patients relative to the general population (n = 84,248 individuals). The incidence rate of CRC development reached 2.44 per 1,000 person-years in the gout cohort during the 13-year follow-up, which was higher than the 2.13 per 1,000 person-years in the control cohort (IRR = 1.15; 95% CI 1.04 to 1.26). After adjusting for age, gender, urbanisation status and comorbidities, patients with and without gout exhibited similar risks of CRC incidence in Taiwan. Commonly used urate-lowering drug and anti-inflammation medication in Taiwan are allopurinol and colchicine which had been shown to reduce the risk of CRC incidence. Thus, they recommend performing further pharmaco-epidemiological studies to particularly evaluate the role of allopurinol in the relationship between gout and CRC.