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Dexamethasone as a probe for docetaxel clearance

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Abstract

Purpose

A pilot study was conducted in 23 patients in order to assess the correlation between docetaxel clearance (CL) and pharmacokinetics of dexamethasone. Dexamethasone is mainly 6-β hydroxylated by CYP3A4, and is regularly used as standard docetaxel premedication. Genotyping of known functional single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of CYP3A5 (G22893A) and mdr-1 (G2677T, G2677A, and C3435T) have been performed in order to tentatively correlate genotype with docetaxel and dexamethasone pharmacokinetics.

Patients and methods

To be eligible for this study, patients were required to have a solid malignancy for which docetaxel was indicated. A population pharmacokinetic approach was used to determine individual pharmacokinetic parameters of both docetaxel and dexamethasone by Bayesian analysis, and to screen relationships between docetaxel CL and patients’ demographic, phenotype and genotype covariates.

Results

Three different pharmacokinetic parameters of dexamethasone were significantly correlated with docetaxel CL: dexamethasone plasma clearance (DPC) that ranged between 7.7 and 27.2 l/h, urinary amount of 6β-hydroxydexamethasone, and the ratio between urinary amount of 6β-hydroxydexamethasone and unchanged dexamethasone. The best covariate model was \( {\text{docetaxel}}\,{\text{CL}}\,({\text{l}}/{\text{h}}) = 356 \times {\text{fu}}_{{\alpha 1{\text{ - AG}}}} \times {\left( {1 - 0.17 \times {\text{HPMT}}} \right)}{\left( {1 + 0.126 \times {\text{DPC}}} \right)} \) where fuα1-AG is the unbound plasma fraction of docetaxel calculated from alpha1-acid glycoprotein plasma level, and HPMT is hepatic metastasis coded as 1 if present or 0 if absent. No significant difference in docetaxel CL was observed between the several genotypes.

Conclusions

Dexamethasone may be used as a probe to predict docetaxel clearances, hence reducing interindividual variability.

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Acknowledgements

Supported by grants from the Ligues Départementales de Lutte Contre le Cancer de la Région Midi-Pyrénées. We thank Bettina Couderc, Valérie Laroute, and Pierre Tisnes for assistance in the fields of molecular biology, HPLC analysis, and chemical synthesis, respectively. We also thank Jean-Pierre Jaffrézou for editorial assistance.

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Correspondence to Etienne Chatelut.

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Puisset, F., Chatelut, E., Dalenc, F. et al. Dexamethasone as a probe for docetaxel clearance. Cancer Chemother Pharmacol 54, 265–272 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00280-004-0823-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00280-004-0823-0

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