Open AccessThe relative importance of cyclosporine exposure in heart, kidney or liver transplant recipients on maintenance therapy
Author(s) -
Hesselink D. A.,
Dam T.,
Metselaar H. J.,
Balk A. H. M. M.,
Mathôt R. A. A.,
Gregoor P. J. H. Smak,
Weimar W.,
Gelder T.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
transplant international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.998
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1432-2277
pISSN - 0934-0874
DOI - 10.1111/j.1432-2277.2004.tb00478.x
Subject(s) - medicine , toxicity , ciclosporin , maintenance therapy , side effect (computer science) , kidney , liver transplantation , heart transplantation , kidney transplantation , renal transplant , urology , transplantation , gastroenterology , chemotherapy , computer science , programming language
We investigated the relationship between cyclosporine exposure and the presence of cyclosporine‐related side effects and assessed the advantage of the cyclosporine concentration 2 h post‐dose (C 2 ) over pre‐dose concentration (C 0 ) monitoring. Cyclosporine area‐under‐the‐concentration‐time curves were measured during the absorption phase (AUC 0–4 h ) in 49 liver, 28 heart and 26 kidney transplant recipients (time since transplantation > 6 years) with or without cyclosporine‐related side effects on maintenance therapy. The cyclosporine C 0 correlated well with AUC 0–4 (r=0.77), whereas C 2 levels correlated strongly with AUC 0–4 (r=0.92). Although we observed a trend towards higher CsA concentrations in transplant recipients with side effects than in patients without CsA toxicity, the large majority of those differences were not statistically significant. Thus, as cyclosporine exposure was not clearly related to the presence of side effects, and C 0 correlated fairly with AUC 0 4 , the advantage of monitoring cyclosporine treatment using C 2 rather than C 0 , may be limited for patients on cyclosporine maintenance therapy.