Rifampicin Can Be Given as Flat-Dosing Instead of Weight-Band Dosing.

Background: The weight-band dosing in tuberculosis treatment regimen has been implemented in clinical practice for decades. Patients will receive different number of fixed dose combination tablets according to their weight-band. However, some analysis has shown that weight was not the best covariate to explain variability of rifampicin exposure. Furthermore, the rationale for using weight-band dosing instead of flat-dosing becomes questionable. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the average and the variability of rifampicin exposure after weight-band dosing and flat-dosing.

Methods: Rifampicin exposure were simulated using previously published population pharmacokinetics model at dose 10-40 mg/kg for weight-band dosing and dose 600-2400 mg for flat-dosing. The median area under the curve (AUC0-24 h) after day 7 and 14 were compared as well as the variability of each dose group between weight-band and flat-dosing.

Results: The difference of median AUC0-24 h of all dose groups between flat-dosing and weight-band dosing were considered low (< 20%) except for the lowest dose. At the dose of 10 mg/kg (600 mg for flat-dosing), flat-dosing resulted in higher median AUC0-24h compared to the weight-band dosing. A marginal decrease in between-patient variability was predicted for weight-band dosing compared to flat-dosing.

Conclusions: Weight-band dosing yields a small and non-clinically relevant decrease in variability of AUC0-24h.