Does dabigatran 75 mg twice daily provide appropriate pharmacokinetic exposures in patients with severe renal impairment compared to standard dosing in moderate renal impairment?
Pharmacokinetic modeling demonstrates that dabigatran 75 mg twice daily is the optimal dosing regimen for patients with severe renal impairment to match exposures of standard dosing in moderate renal impairment.
The objective of this work was to derive a dosing regimen for dabigatran in patients with severe renal impairment by modeling and simulation. Data from a dedicated renal impairment study were used to model the pharmacokinetics of dabigatran in normal and renal-impaired subjects. Model parameters were used to simulate the average concentration time-course of dabigatran following various dosing regimens. Pharmacokinetics of dabigatran in normal and renal-impaired subjects were best described by a 2-compartment open model with first-order absorption and elimination. Simulations were performed to select an appropriate regimen that reasonably matched the exposures on an average with those observed in subjects with moderate renal impairment who did not require a dose adjustment because of a favorable benefit-risk. Dabigatran 150 mg given once daily resulted in 35% higher average C(max, ss), whereas a 75 mg once daily regimen resulted in 42% lower average Cτ, relative to that observed with 150 mg administered twice daily in subjects with moderate renal impairment. A twice daily regimen of dabigatran 75 mg resulted in a reasonable matching of exposures and was selected as an appropriate dosing regimen in patients with severe renal impairment. This recommendation was incorporated in the dosing and recommendation section of dabigatran product insert.
Hariharan et al. (2011) studied this question.