Net efficacy adjusted for risk (NEAR): a simple procedure for measuring risk:benefit balance.

Background: Although several mathematical models have been proposed to assess the risk:benefit of drugs in one measure, their use in practice has been rather limited. Our objective was to design a simple, easily applicable model. In this respect, measuring the proportion of patients who respond favorably to treatment without being affected by adverse drug reactions (ADR) could be a suitable endpoint.

Factors influencing cyclosporine blood concentration-dose ratio.

Objective: To analyze the trough cyclosporine concentration-dose ratio (CDR) and its relationship to some commonly available factors such as cyclosporine dosage, patient age, grade of obesity, posttransplant days, serum creatinine, serum bilirubin, and serum cholesterol by multiple linear regression.

Methods: The study was performed on 866 samples from 90 transplant recipients (25 kidney, 25 heart, 17 bone marrow, 13 liver, 10 simultaneous pancreas-kidney).

Results: The results show differences between transplants both in cyclosporine CDR variability (expressed by the coefficients of variation) and in the capability of those factors to explain this variability (expressed by the coefficient of determination).