Journal
TROPICAL MEDICINE & INTERNATIONAL HEALTH
Volume 6, Issue 5, Pages 412-420Publisher
BLACKWELL SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-3156.2001.00725.x
Keywords
Angola; drug levels; drug resistance; melarsoprol; pharmacokinetics; sleeping sickness; trypanosomiasis; trypanosomes
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Melarsoprol, an organo-arsenical drug, has been the drug of choice for late-stage trypanosomiasis for 50 years. Because of the lack of alternatives any abatement of this medication will have a dramatic negative impact on the perspectives for patients. As a large number of patients refractory to melarsoprol treatment was recently reported from northern Uganda and northern Angola, we investigated in northern Angola whether interpatient pharmacokinetic differences influence the outcome of melarsoprol treatment. Drug levels were determined by a biological assay in serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 22 patients. Nine patients could be successfully treated, eight were refractory and the outcome was unclear or no adequate follow-up information was available for five patients. No differences in the pharmacokinetic parameters (maximum serum concentration C-max, half-life t(1/2 beta), total clearance C-L and the Volume of distribution V-ss) could be detected between the groups. Serum and CSF concentrations for all patients were in the expected range. This result indicates that other underlying factors are responsible far treatment failures.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available