Do you want fries with that?
Exploiting interactions between food and drugs drastically reduce the rapidly rising costs of several anticancer drugs and other drugs, perhaps in many, the 16th, two specialists in pharmacology, cancer in a comment of July 2007 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology suggest. Oncologists Mark Ratain, University of Chicago, MD and Ezra Cohen, MD, the attention to the other side of the recent studies show that certain foods can alter absorption or delay breakdown of targeted anti-cancer drugs.Instead of these studies, highlighting a dosing problem, Ratain and Cohen argue that results like this should point researchers toward a partial solution, a new way to reduce drug costs, increasing the benefits of these effective but expensive drugs. The comment was inspired by a
study presented in June at the American Society for Clinical Oncology. Researchers from Dartmouth showed that taking the breast cancer drug lapatinib (Tykerb) with food, rather than on an empty stomach, as suggested by the label led to more drug being absorbed and available to treat cancer.Patients currently take five 250 mg tablets of lapatinib on an empty stomach. The study found that taking the medication with a meal increased the bioavailability of the drug by 167 percent. Take this medicine with a high fat meal increases the level of 325 percent. Just change the timing, taking this medicine with a meal rather than on an empty stomach, you can use 40 percent (or less) of the drug, said Ratain. Since lapatinib costs about 2,900 dollars a month, which could save each
patient or $ 1.740 per month.Rounding out this meal with grapefruit juice can increase plasma concentrations after the prospectus, the savings could increase to 80 percent, the authors suggest, less the cost of food and juice. We hope that the pill of 250 mg of lapatinib accompanied by food and washed with a glass of grapefruit juice may increase plasma concentrations comparable to five 250 mg tablets on an empty stomach,
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