ISSN:
1432-0843
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Medicine
Notes:
Summary Previous pharmacokinetic studies of i.v. highdose melphalan (HDM) have demonstrated large interindividual variations in the pharmacokinetic parameters. We therefore studied the possibility of using a test dose of the drug to determine the level of a subsequent therapeutic dose. This study was undertaken to establish whether the pharmacokinetics of melphalan were linear and reproducible within the same patient and determine whether a linear extrapolation could be carried out from the test dose. The first eight patients were studied on two occasions separated by 2 hours (repeatability stage). Although reasonable evidence for linear pharmacokinetics was obtained from these patients, the data suggested a number of factors that might have introduced errors. Therefore, the second group of ten patients were treated on a slightly different protocol on two occasions 24 h apart (linearity stage). The ratios of the two doses ranged from 1 to 8 (repeatability stage) and from 2.6 to 10 (linearity stage). During both stages there was a good correlation between the AUC measured for the second infusion and that predicted from the first (r=0.929 and r=0.943, respectively). We conclude that a test dose can be used to determine the subsequent dose of melphalan necessary to produce a desired AUC.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00273524
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