Publications by authors named "Luzie Eichentopf"
Introduction: Cross sectional therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) data mining introduces new opportunities for the investigation of medication treatment effects to find optimal therapeutic windows. Medication discontinuation has been proven useful as an objective surrogate marker to assess treatment failure. This study aimed to investigate the treatment effects of escitalopram and pharmacokinetic influences on blood levels using retrospectively assessed data from a TDM database.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- This study investigates the relationship between escitalopram dosage, blood concentration levels, and therapeutic effects, revealing inconsistencies with current recommended reference ranges.
- A systematic review of 1,032 articles found that only 30 studies met the criteria, showing limited evidence for a clear concentration/effect relationship with escitalopram.
- The authors propose a new target blood concentration range of 20-40 ng/ml for effective antidepressant treatment, suggesting the upper limit reflects a therapeutic maximum rather than a side effect threshold.
Rationale: While one of the basic axioms of pharmacology postulates that there is a relationship between the concentration and effects of a drug, the value of measuring blood levels is questioned by many clinicians. This is due to the often-missing validation of therapeutic reference ranges.
Objectives: Here, we present a prototypical meta-analysis of the relationships between blood levels of aripiprazole, its target engagement in the human brain, and clinical effects and side effects in patients with schizophrenia and related disorders.
For many psychotropic drugs, monitoring of drug concentrations in the blood (Therapeutic Drug Monitoring; TDM) has been proven useful to individualize treatments and optimize drug effects. Clinicians hereby compare individual drug concentrations to population-based reference ranges for a titration of prescribed doses. Thus, established reference ranges are pre-requisite for TDM.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF