Safe treatment of thiopurine S-methyltransferase deficient Crohn's disease patients with azathioprine.
case_report · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 12477776.
- Also identified by PMC identifier 1773505.
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Abstract
Thiopurine S-methyltransferase (TPMT) deficient patients develop life threatening haematotoxicity (for example, pancytopenia) when treated with a standard dose of azathioprine (AZA) and 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP) due to excessive accumulation of cytotoxic metabolites. At present, it is generally recommended that these patients should not receive AZA or 6-MP treatment for inflammatory bowel disease. We report for the first time that Crohn's disease patients with TPMT deficiency can be successfully treated with AZA. We illustrate this with three cases where treatment has been successful and toxicity has been avoided by carefully titrating the drug dose. Thus very low TPMT activity demands pharmacogenetically guided dosing.
Medical subject headings
- Azathioprine
- Crohn Disease
- Immunosuppressive Agents
- Methyltransferases