Allopurinol

Allopurinol is one of those foundational drugs in rheumatology and nephrology that we often take for granted until we see a patient whose life it has fundamentally changed. It’s not a new or flashy biologic; it’s a classic, evidence-based workhorse. In essence, it’s a xanthine oxidase inhibitor, which sounds technical, but its job is elegantly simple: to lower the body’s production of uric acid. We use it primarily for the long-term management of conditions driven by hyperuricemia—gout being the most famous, but certainly not the only one.