JLE

Journal de Pharmacie Clinique

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Antilymphocyte serums in renal transplantation : pharmaco-economic evaluation Volume 17, issue 1, Mars 1998

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Antithymocyte globulins have been used successfully for induction therapy as well as for treatment of established allograft rejection. This one year retrospective study compares two antilymphocyte serums (ALS) : ATG ® Frésénius (ATG) and Thymoglobuline ® Mérieux (Thymoglobuline) efficacy and tolerance. Patients received either ATG 2,3 mg/kg/d (group I, n = 30) or Thymoglobuline 2,9 mg/kg/d (group II, n = 31) for 15 days in induction therapy or 7 days in established rejection therapy. Efficiency was assessed by the incidence of an acute rejection in the 61 patients during the three months following transplantation, whereas tolerance evaluation criteria are incidence of serum sickness and neutropenia during all the treatments. Nineteen acute rejections (31 %) were observed (10 in group I and 9 in group II). Significant differences were observed between the two groups for incidence of serum sickness (5 % in group I, 32 % in group II, p = 0,0014) and neutropenia (17 % in group I, 49 % in group II, p = 0,0017). These side effects led to an increase in the hospitalization duration from 24 ± 11 days up to 37 ± 23 days. From this study, it can be concluded that ATG seems to be as effective as Thymoglobuline and better tolerated, it reduces hospitalization duration and decreases transplantation cost.