Tacrolimus dose requirements and CYP3A5 genotype in Iranian liver transplant recipients

Negar Azarpira, Saman Nikeghbalian, Bita Geramizadeh, Mahdokht Aghdai, Masumeh Darai, Ramin Yaghubi, Maryam Ayatollahi, Marjan Rahsaz, Zahra Malekpoor, Mehrzad Banihashemi, Tahereh Heidari.
Transplant Research Center, Nemazi Hospital, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.

Optimal blood levels of tacrolimus in transplant recipients are critically important to preserve the allograft. Suboptimal doses of the immunosuppressant can result in allograft toxicity or rejection. In the present study, we determined genotypes of patients and analyzed their medical documents in one month period after liver transplantation. A fixed initial dosage of 0.1 mg/kg was prescribed daily for patients regardless of their CYP3A5 genotype. The CYP3A5 genotyping was performed with polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism .

The frequency distribution of CYP3A5 genotypes was 4% (4/100) for *1/*3, 1% (1/100) for *1/*1, and 96% (96/100) for *3/*3. There were no significant difference between tacrolimus blood levels and different CYP3A5 genotypes.