By writer to www.healio.com
WASHINGTON — Outcomes from the ATHENA trial introduced at ASN Kidney Week instructed azathioprine conferred comparable outcomes as mycophenolate mofetil for kidney transplant recipients. Azathioprine was additionally inexpensive which, based on the researchers, makes the drug a worthy various for sufferers who’re additionally on low-dose cyclosporine immunosuppression.
Paolo Cravedi, MD, PhD, of Icahn College of Drugs at Mount Sinai in New York, advised attendees at a press convention that the research adopted two massive trials from the 1990s that discovered mycophenolate mofetil was related to a big discount in acute mobile rejection in comparison with azathioprine in kidney transplant recipients. He stated that, because of these trials, mycophenolate mofetil changed azathioprine worldwide which had a serious financial impression.
“One thing that ought to be saved in thoughts,” he stated, “is that an previous formulation of cyclosporine was nonetheless getting used when these trials have been carried out. Once we in contrast the medication with the brand new formulation, we couldn’t discover any advantage of mycophenolate mofetil over azathioprine. They have been just about similar by way of affected person survival and graft survival.”
As these outcomes have been discovered utilizing commonplace ranges of immunosuppressive brokers, Cravedi stated the ATHENA trial was designed to check the protection and efficacy of azathioprine in comparison with mycophenolate mofetil with at the moment’s minimized doses of immunosuppression.
Due to this fact, researchers included 119 sufferers on mycophenolate mofetil and 114 sufferers on azathioprine of their research. At Three years, they discovered 31.9% of these taking mycophenolate mofetil developed power allograft nephropathy vs. 32.4% taking azathioprine. Related outcomes have been additionally seen between the 2 teams relating to biopsy-proven acute mobile rejection (18.5% on mycophenolate mofetil vs. 21.1% on azathioprine), subclinical acute mobile rejection (9.2% vs. 7%) and graft failure (5% vs. 6.1%). eGFR measured at Three years was 53.eight mL/min/1.73m2 for these on mycophenolate mofetil vs. 51.Four mL/min/1.73m2 with azathioprine.
Cravedi stated that whereas each medication demonstrated almost similar security profiles, azathioprine was considerably inexpensive than mycophenolate mofetil.
“Our price evaluation confirmed that placing a kidney transplant recipient on azathioprine as a substitute of mycophenolate mofetil would save $3,500 over 1 yr of therapy,” he stated. “As a result of decrease price of azathioprine, we predict it represents a priceless various to mycophenolate mofetil in sufferers who’re additionally on low-dose immunosuppression.” – by Melissa J. Webb
Reference:
Cravedi P, et al. Summary FR-OR135. Offered at: ASN Kidney Week; Nov. 7-10, 2019; Washington, D.C.
Disclosure: Cravedi studies no related monetary disclosures.
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