We report a case of an adult woman of African ancestry who was hospitalized with statin induced- rhabdomyolysis. The patient presented to the emergency room with a 2-week history of worsening muscle pain, nausea, vomiting and low oral intake, 1 month after starting 40 mg daily dose of rosuvastatin. Sequencing of SLCO1B1 coding regions revealed the patient was heterozygous for two SLCO1B1 deleterious variants, c.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHypertension Canada's 2020 guidelines for the prevention, diagnosis, risk assessment, and treatment of hypertension in adults and children provide comprehensive, evidence-based guidance for health care professionals and patients. Hypertension Canada develops the guidelines using rigourous methodology, carefully mitigating the risk of bias in our process. All draft recommendations undergo critical review by expert methodologists without conflict to ensure quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Lower than recommended doses of direct-acting oral anticoagulants are often prescribed to older adults with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). Our goal was to determine the consequences of lower than recommended dosing on plasma apixaban concentrations during the clinical care of older adults with NVAF.
Design: Convenience sample of patients receiving anticoagulation during 2017.
Hypertension Canada provides annually updated, evidence-based guidelines for the diagnosis, assessment, prevention, and treatment of hypertension in adults and children. This year, the adult and pediatric guidelines are combined in one document. The new 2018 pregnancy-specific hypertension guidelines are published separately.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Pharmacol Ther
September 2018
Rosuvastatin is commonly prescribed for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia and hepatic transporter-mediated accumulation in the liver enhances its efficacy. Current guidelines indicate no preference for fed or fasted rosuvastatin administration. We investigated the association between food intake and rosuvastatin disposition in healthy subjects and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C)-lowering effects among patients taking rosuvastatin.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Direct-acting oral anticoagulants (DOACs) are widely prescribed for stroke prevention in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). An important advantage of DOACs is that routine monitoring of an anticoagulation response is not necessary. Nevertheless, because of their mechanism of action, a DOAC anticoagulation effect can be inferred based on the observed plasma concentration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHypertension Canada provides annually updated, evidence-based guidelines for the diagnosis, assessment, prevention, and treatment of hypertension. This year, we introduce 10 new guidelines. Three previous guidelines have been revised and 5 have been removed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose Of Review: We provide an overview of orally administered lipid-lowering therapies under development.
Recent Findings: Recent data support statins for intermediate risk primary prevention, and ezetimibe for high-risk secondary prevention. Novel agents in development include bempedoic acid and gemcabene, and work continues on one remaining cholesteryl ester transfer protein inhibitor, anacetrapib, to determine whether this class can reduce cardiovascular risk.
Curr Atheroscler Rep
May 2016
Lipid-lowering medications, particularly statins, have been a popular target for pharmacogenetic studies. A handful of genes have shown promise for predicting response to therapy from the perspective of lipid lowering, as well as myopathy. A number of genes have been implicated and have biological plausibility based on their involvement with the pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics of statins or other lipid-lowering medications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose Of Review: We provide an overview of recent advances in the therapy of hypertriglyceridemia, focusing on several new therapies with potential for treating of familial chylomicronemia, other forms of hypertriglyceridemia, and for triglyceride-lowering in patients with other lipid disorders.
Recent Findings: Newer triglyceride-lowering modalities under evaluation include gene therapy for lipoprotein lipase deficiency (alipogene tiparvovec), and antisense oligonucleotides against mRNA for apolipoproteins B (mipomersen) and C3 (volanesorsen, ISIS 304801). Other potential therapies include small molecule inhibitors of microsomal triglyceride transfer protein (lomitapide) and diacylglycerol acyltransferase-1 (pradigastat), and a monoclonal antibody against angiopoietin-like protein 3 (REGN1500).
Due to high basal interindividual variation in cytochrome P450 3A (CYP3A) activity and susceptibility to drug interactions, there has been interest in the application of efficient probe drug phenotyping strategies, as well as endogenous biomarkers for assessment of in vivo CYP3A activity. The biomarkers 4β-hydroxycholesterol (4βHC) and 6β-hydroxycortisol (6βHCL) are sensitive to CYP3A induction and inhibition. However, their utility for the assessment of constitutive CYP3A activity remains uncertain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExpert Opin Pharmacother
June 2015
Introduction: Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death, and hypercholesterolemia is a major risk factor. Statins, with simvastatin among the most widely used, have ample evidence demonstrating prevention of cardiovascular events and mortality. Ezetimibe is effective at improving serum lipids in combination with statins or alone, but its role has been controversial.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTamoxifen is a prodrug, requiring cytochrome P450 enzyme-mediated metabolism to form the active metabolite endoxifen. We identified a case of drug-drug interaction involving tamoxifen and phenytoin, associated with a markedly lower endoxifen level than predicted. The patient is a 49-year-old woman, genotyped as a cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) extensive metabolizer, chronically taking phenytoin for a seizure disorder.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSequencing of the human genome led to great hopes and expectations for a 'genomics revolution' where disease diagnosis as well as therapies would be based on an individual's genetic makeup. Although significant progress has been made, a number of challenging hurdles must be overcome prior to the broader adoption and implementation of pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine as a part of standard patient care. One aspect of pharmacogenomics-based personalized medicine that has not garnered as much attention, a key focus of this perspective, is the importance of interpreting pharmacogenomic test results in a patient-specific clinical context, and expert physicians and other allied health care providers with the requisite expertise in clinical pharmacology and genomics who are able to provide such services.
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