This international guideline proposes improving clozapine package inserts worldwide by using ancestry-based dosing and titration. Adverse drug reaction (ADR) databases suggest that clozapine is the third most toxic drug in the United States (US), and it produces four times higher worldwide pneumonia mortality than that by agranulocytosis or myocarditis. For trough steady-state clozapine serum concentrations, the therapeutic reference range is narrow, from 350 to 600 ng/mL with the potential for toxicity and ADRs as concentrations increase. Clozapine is mainly metabolized by CYP1A2 (female non-smokers, the lowest dose; male smokers, the highest dose). Poor metabolizer status through phenotypic conversion is associated with co-prescription of inhibitors (including oral contraceptives and valproate), obesity, or inflammation with C-reactive protein (CRP) elevations. The Asian population (Pakistan to Japan) or the Americas’ original inhabitants have lower CYP1A2 activity and require lower clozapine doses to reach concentrations of 350 ng/mL. In the US, daily doses of 300–600 mg/day are recommended. Slow personalized titration may prevent early ADRs (including syncope, myocarditis, and pneumonia). This guideline defines six personalized titration schedules for inpatients: 1) ancestry from Asia or the original people from the Americas with lower metabolism (obesity or valproate) needing minimum therapeutic dosages of 75–150 mg/day, 2) ancestry from Asia or the original people from the Americas with average metabolism needing 175–300 mg/day, 3) European/Western Asian ancestry with lower metabolism (obesity or valproate) needing 100–200 mg/day, 4) European/Western Asian ancestry with average metabolism needing 250–400 mg/day, 5) in the US with ancestries other than from Asia or the original people from the Americas with lower clozapine metabolism (obesity or valproate) needing 150–300 mg/day, and 6) in the US with ancestries other than from Asia or the original people from the Americas with average clozapine metabolism needing 300–600 mg/day. Baseline and weekly CRP monitoring for at least four weeks is required to identify any inflammation, including inflammation secondary to clozapine rapid titration.

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Background In resource-limited settings, many patients, with no prior PI treatment on a second-line, high genetic barrier, ritonavir boosted protease inhibitor (PI) containing regimen have virologic failure. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional survey to investigate the aetiology of virologic failure in two public health antiretroviral clinics in South Africa documenting the prevalence of virologic failure (HIV RNA load > 500 copies/ml) and genotypic antiretroviral resistance; and lopinavir hair and plasma concentrations in a nested case-control study. Results Ninety three patients treated with a second-line regimen including lopinavir boosted with ritonavir were included, of whom 50 (25 cases, with virologic failure and 25 controls) were included in a nested case control study. Of 93 patients 37(40%) had virological failure, only 2 of which had had major protease inhibitor mutations. The negative predictive values: probability of failure with lopinavir plasma concentration > 1μg/mL or hair concentrations > 3.63ng/mg for virologic failure were 86% and 89%, and positive predictive values of low concentrations 73% and 79%, respectively, whereas all virologic failures with HIV RNA loads above 1000 copies/ml, of patients without protease inhibitor resistance, could be explained by either having a low lopinavir concentration in plasma or hair. Conclusions Most patients who fail a LPV/r regimen, in our setting, have poor lopinavir exposure. A threshold plasma lopinavir concentration (indicating recent LPV/r use) and/or hair concentration (indicating longer term lopinavir exposure) are valuable in determining the aetiology of virologic failure and identifying patients in need of adherence counselling or resistance testing.

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There is weak clinical evidence suggesting that efavirenz use may worsen neurocognitive impairment or be associated with less improvement in neurocognitive impairment than other antiretrovirals. Efavirenz, especially its major metabolite 8-hydroxy-efavirenz, is toxic in neuron cultures at concentrations found in the cerebrospinal fluid. Extensive metabolizers of efavirenz may therefore be more likely to develop efavirenz toxicity by forming more 8-hydroxy-efavirenz. Several potential mechanisms exist to explain the observed efavirenz neurotoxicity, including altered calcium hemostasis, decreases in brain creatine kinase, mitochondrial damage, increases in brain proinflammatory cytokines and involvement of the cannabinoid system. There is a need for large randomized controlled trials to determine if the neuronal toxicity induced by efavirenz results in clinically significant neurological impairment.

Rifampin coadministration dramatically reduces plasma lopinavir (LPV) concentrations. In healthy volunteers, doubling the dose of a lopinavir-ritonavir (LPV/r) capsule formulation overcame this interaction, but a subsequent study of double doses of the tablet formulation was stopped early owing to hepatotoxicity. However, healthy-volunteer study findings may not apply to HIV-infected adults. We evaluated the steady-state pharmacokinetics of LPV in HIV-infected adults virologically suppressed on an LPV/r regimen who were given rifampin, and the dose of the LPV/r tablet formulation was gradually increased. The steady-state pharmacokinetics of LPV/r were evaluated at baseline, a week after commencing rifampin, a week after the LPV/r dose was increased 1.5 times, and a week after the LPV/r dose was doubled. Twenty-one participants were enrolled. The median [interquartile range (IQR)] predose LPV concentrations (C 0 ) were 8.1 (6.2 to 9.8) mg/liter at baseline, 1.7 (0.3 to 3.0) mg/liter after 7 days of rifampin, 5.9 (2.1 to 9.9) mg/liter with 1.5 times the dose of LPV/r, and 10.8 (7.0 to 13.1) mg/liter with double-dose LPV/r. There were no significant differences in the LPV area under the plasma concentration-time curve from 0 to 12 h (AUC 0-12 ), C 0 , C 12 , maximum concentration of drug in serum (C max ), or half-life (t 1/2 ) between the baseline and double-dose LPV/r time points. Treatment was generally well tolerated, with two participants developing asymptomatic grade 3/4 transaminitis. Doubling the dose of the tablet formulation of LPV/r overcomes induction by rifampin. Less hepatotoxicity occurred in our cohort of HIV-infected participants than was reported in healthy-volunteer studies.Rifampin is a key component of tuberculosis treatment but also a potent inducer of many cytochrome P450 enzymes and the efflux pump p-glycoprotein (15). Protease inhibitors are substrates of both CYP 3A4 and p-glycoprotein, and the trough concentrations of all ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors are reduced by more than 90% when standard doses are coadministered with rifampin (2). A healthy-volunteer study demonstrated that similar lopinavir (LPV) trough concentrations can be achieved either by adding ritonavir (RTV) to give a lopinavir/ritonavir ratio of 1:1 or by doubling the dose of the capsule formulation of lopinavir-ritonavir (LPV/r) (12).Subsequent healthy-volunteer studies of the interaction between rifampin and adjusted doses of ritonavir-boosted saquinavir, atazanavir, and lopinavir (tablet formulation) were prematurely terminated because of high incidences of hepatotoxicity (6, 7, 16). These high rates of hepatotoxicity in healthy volunteers might not apply to patients with tuberculosis and HIV. First, in the healthy-volunteer studies, initiating rifampin prior to the protease inhibitor was associated with high rates of hepatotoxicity (6,7,16). In high-burden countries, protease inhibitors are used as part of the second-line antiretroviral treatment (ART) regimen; hence, most patients are established on the protea...

Coadministration of antitubercular and antiretroviral therapy is common in high-burden countries where tuberculosis is the commonest opportunistic infection. Concomitant use of rifampicin and many antiretroviral drugs is complicated by drug-drug interactions caused by the potent induction by rifampicin of genes involved in drug metabolism and transport, which could result in subtherapeutic antiretroviral drug concentrations. This review focuses on drug-drug interactions involving antiretrovirals used in resource-limited settings: the non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) efavirenz or nevirapine, and ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors. The reduction of nevirapine concentrations with concomitant rifampicin is greater than with efavirenz, particularly during the lead-in dose period when subtherapeutic concentrations occur in the majority of patients. There is reassuring data on the effectiveness of standard doses of efavirenz with concomitant rifampicin, but the largest cohort study found a higher risk of virological failure with nevirapine. The drug-drug interaction between rifampicin and ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors is more marked than with the NNRTIs, and therapeutic concentrations have only been achieved with adjusted doses of lopinavir/ritonavir or with saquinavir/ritonavir (400/400 mg every 12 h). The major barrier to using adjusted dose protease inhibitors with rifampicin is the high rates of hepatotoxicity seen in healthy volunteers. The alternative strategy followed in resource-rich settings is to replace rifampicin with rifabutin, but even if the price of rifabutin were to be dramatically reduced it would be difficult to implement in high-burden countries where standardized antitubercular regimens with fixed-dose combinations are used.

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