Voriconazole therapeutic drug monitoring: focus on safety

Abstract

Importance of the field: Voriconazole has been widely used for the treatment of invasive fungal diseases, particularly invasive aspergillosis. Drug–drug interactions are, however, the main drawback associated with voriconazole use, since this drug suffers from extensive hepatic metabolism.

Areas covered in this review: This article reviews the current literature on voriconazole therapeutic drug monitoring, with a special focus on drug safety.

What the reader will gain: An update on voriconazole metabolism, drug interactions, toxicity and the relation of these with voriconazole drug concentrations.

Take home message: Therapy with voriconazole may be better guided by measuring voriconazole concentrations in the plasma.

Keywords::

• adverse effects
• CYP2C19 protein
• drug monitoring
• drug toxicity
• voriconazole

Acknowledgements

The authors thank DW Denning (The University of Manchester, UK) and T Patterson (UTHSCSA, USA) for their thoughts on this subject.

Notes

This box summarises key points contained in the article.