Lung transplantation has proved to be an effective treatment worldwide for a variety of end-stage lung diseases.In Japan,living-donor lung transplantation is the predominant procedure used.In this and other types of transplantation,the calcineurin inhibitor cyclosporine (CYA) is frequently used as an immunosuppressive drug.However,this drug requires strict control of dosing to minimize the risk of rejection and over-immunosuppression,and for the orally administered drug,interand intra-individual bioavailability vary widely.Intensive drug monitoring is therefore necessary.
In this study,25 patients who received lung allografts from living donors between October 1998 and January 2006 at Okayama University Hospital were investigated to see if there was any correlation between the CYA concentration-dose ratio and biochemical parameters.The most significant correlation was between the CYA concentration-dose ratio and total cholesterol,with a correlation coefficient of 0.46.As for individual results in this respect,14 of 25 patients had a correlation coefficient of 0.5 or greater,and the highest was 0.92.There was thus a definite correlation between the CYA concentration-dose ratio and total cholesterol in patients who had undergone living-donor lung transplantation.