Numerous factors interfere with the ability to achieve optimal pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic targets and this has been associated with greater mortality and lower cure rates. The recent study by Zoller and colleagues examining linezolid levels in critically ill patients emphasises this point. Their study is unique in the description of the intra-patient and inter-patient variability that ...

Vancomycin, a glycopeptide antibiotic, was developed-and released in the 1950's for the treatment of aerobic gram-positive infections and has been widely used mainly in the treatment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections. Early reports regarding the possibility of nephrotoxicity and ototoxicity led to concern about the use of vancomycin and the need to monitor serum concentr...

In this issue of the Revista Brasileira de Hematologia e Hemoterapia, Martins et al. (1) are publishing an interesting review, a meta-analysis, of the clinical and analytical aspects of therapeutic drug monitoring of imatinib in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Imatinib, the archetype for tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapeutics, is an excellent example of intelligent drug development accompanied ...

Therapeutic drug monitoring is aimed at using drug concentration measurements to manage a patient's medication requirement and optimise clinical outcome, particularly in respect of drugs with narrow therapeutic index. Typically, immunoassay methods of various techniques are employed with the advantage of rapid turnaround time and ease of operation. The chromatographic methods are specific and c...

Schizophrenia is a common disease, characterized by progressive functional decline exacerbated by psychotic relapses that often result from a lack of full adherence to antipsychotic (APS) medication. Although atypical APS medications do not have clear therapeutic windows, as generally required for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM), measuring APS plasma levels in the context of a population expe...

Based on a previously derived population pharmacokinetic model, a novel neonatal amikacin dosing regimen was developed. The aim of the current study was to prospectively evaluate this dosing regimen. First, early (before and after second dose) therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) observations were evaluated for achieving target trough (<3 mg/liter) and peak (>24 mg/liter) levels. Second, all obser...