Initial Serum C-reactive Protein Level as a Predictor of Increasing Serum Vancomycin Concentration During Treatment.

Background: Vancomycin has a narrow therapeutic window, and an increase in its serum concentration-to-dose ratio during treatment can cause renal toxicity. Therefore, this study was aimed at finding a marker to identify patients at risk of increasing serum vancomycin during treatment.

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of patients treated with vancomycin at Kanazawa University Hospital, Japan, from April 2012 to May 2015.

Effect of coadministration of rifampicin on the pharmacokinetics of linezolid: clinical and animal studies.

Background: Combination therapy of linezolid (LZD) and rifampicin (RFP) may be more effective than monotherapy for treating gram-positive bacterial infections, but several studies have suggested that RFP decreases LZD exposures, thereby increasing the risk of therapeutic failure and emergence of LZD-resistant strains. However, the mechanism of the drug-drug interaction between LZD and RFP is unknown.

Methods: We conducted a prospective, open-label, uncontrolled clinical study in Japanese patients receiving LZD and RFP to evaluate the effect of coadministered RFP on the concentration of LZD.

PK/PD analysis of biapenem in patients undergoing continuous hemodiafiltration.

Background: Continuous hemodiafiltration (CHDF) is used as renal replacement therapy for critically ill patients with renal failure, and to treat hypercytokinemia. Since CHDF also clears therapeutic agents, drug pharmacokinetics (PK) should be dependent upon CHDF conditions. Although the antibiotic biapenem (BIPM) is used in patients undergoing CHDF, the optimal therapeutic regimen in such patients has not been fully clarified.

Repeated episodes of ischemic stroke over a short period in a patient with essential thrombocythemia on anticoagulant therapy.

A 69-year-old man who had essential thrombocythemia, for which he was taking no medications, suddenly developed aphasia and right hemiplegia and was admitted to the hospital. He was thought to have had an embolic stroke and was initially treated with warfarin. Although the international normalized ratio was in the therapeutic range, he had 3 additional ischemic stroke episodes with the same symptoms after the index stroke.

Epilepsy and takotsubo cardiomyopathy: a case report.

A 60-year-old woman with a history of symptomatic seizures secondary to a subarachnoid hemorrhage was admitted to hospital because of a generalized seizure. The following day, her electrocardiogram showed negative T waves in II, III, (a)V(F), and V(2-6), and the echocardiogram showed an impaired left ventricular ejection fraction with ventricular apical akinesia. Head magnetic resonance imaging showed no acute brain injury, but single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) showed hyperperfusion which affected the left temporal cortex in particular.