Monographs on drugs which are frequently analyzed in therapeutic drug monitoring

In addition to the monographs which have been published in the past 7 years by the working group "Drug Monitoring" of the Swiss Society of Clinical Chemistry (SSCC) [16], new monographs have been written. The data presented in these monographs provide an overview of the information which is important for the request and interpretation of the results. Therefore, laboratory health professionals and the receivers of the reports are the targeted readers. In this series, antiretroviral drugs are presented for which drug concentrations are regularly determined (protease inhibitors, non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors). To date, no clear evidence has been established that therapeutic drug monitoring of these drugs increases the success of the antiretroviral therapy. Nevertheless, many cases have demonstrated that the therapy can be guided with much more confidence and with good success if the drug concentrations are determined, especially if the patient has a combination therapy with many pharmacokinetically interfering compounds. First, information is given about pharmacology and pharmacokinetics of these drugs, such as protein binding, metabolic pathways with specific enzymes involved, elimination half-life time, elimination route(s) of the parent drug, as well as therapeutic and toxic concentrations. Moreover, indications for therapeutic drug monitoring are listed with important preanalytical information (time point of blood sampling and time to steady state since beginning or after change of posology). Furthermore, the stability of the drug and its metabolite(s) after blood sampling are described. For readers with a specific interest, references to important publications are given. The number of monographs will be further enlarged. The updated files are presented on the homepage of the SSCC (www.sscc.ch). We hope that these monographs are helpful for the better handling of therapeutic drug monitoring and we are looking forward to receiving comments from the readers. © 2012 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston.