Jytte Birnbaum

• University of California, San Francisco

In phase III trials daclizumab was used in a five-dose regimen of 1 mg/kg at 2-weekly intervals, resulting in saturation of IL-2Rα on circulating lymphocytes for up to 120 days after renal transplantation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate daclizumab blood concentrations and the saturation of the IL-2Rα on the circulating lymphocytes with a...

Cyclosporine and tacrolimus are substrates and potent inhibitors of the multidrug transporter, P-glycoprotein, in vitro. The authors have investigated the effect of chronic therapy with these and other immunosuppressive drugs on the expression and function of P-glycoprotein in T lymphocytes. Using a P-gp antibody, the authors studied the level of e...

A selection of instruments has been developed to measure health-related quality of life (QOL). Generic instruments are designed for use across medical conditions, but may not detect small but clinically important QOL changes [1]. Disease-specific measures improve the sensitivity of QOL measurement, and may help detect differences between alternativ...

The efficacy of murine monoclonal anti-interleukin 2 or chain receptor (Tac) antibodies is Limited by a short half-life and the development of antibodies to the heterologous protein, The safety, pharmacokinetics-dynamics, and immunosuppressive effect of a humanized anti-Tac antibody (HAT) was evaluated in 12 renal transplant recipients, Ten patient...

A new flow cytometric method (FCM) for detection of soluble interleukin 2 receptor (sIL-2R) in serum was established. Using this method, results from one to forty samples can be obtained in less than 2 hr as compared with 5 hr in an ELISA. Comparing over 300 sera samples tested by both methods, we found the FCM to be as specific and sensitive as th...

The relative bioavailability of single oral doses of prednisone with and without sucralfate administration was determined in 12 healthy male volunteers. Each subject participated in a randomized three-way cross-over study consisting of the following three phases: treatment A, prednisone given alone; treatment B, 2 days pretreatment with sucralfate...

Kidney transplant patients receive chronic prednisone and azathioprine for immunosuppression. However, the effect of azathioprine on prednisolone pharmacokinetics has not been determined in this population. Total and unbound prednisolone concentrations were determined, using high performance liquid chromatography and equilibrium dialysis, in eight...

Kidney transplant patients receiving phenytoin or phenobarbital may have decreased graft survival. These drugs have been shown to enhance the metabolism of glucocorticoids. We determined the disposition of total and unbound prednisolone in six stable kidney transplant patients receiving prednisone for immunosuppression and phenytoin or phenobarbita...

Twenty patients who underwent uninephrectomy for kidney donation between 1964 and 1968 participated in a long-term study of the function of the solitary kidney. Mean follow up after uninephrectomy was 15.8 +/- .3 years. One patient with a strong family history of essential hypertension developed de novo mild hypertension. The current creatinine cle...

Prednisone and prednisolone are drugs with the potential for therapeutic inequivalence due to bioavailability problems. The objective of our study was to compare the systemic bioavailability of prednisolone from oral prednisone and prednisolone. Nine kidney transplant patients receiving prednisone (12.5 to 22.5 mg per day) were administered, in a r...

Little information is available on the disposition of prednisolone in kidney transplant patients and whether correlations exist between the pharmacokinetics and therapeutic or toxic effects of this drug. The present study was designed to determine the pharmacokinetics of prednisolone in six noncushingoid and six cushingoid transplant recipients. Th...