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Something else about Tykerb
A recent company-sponsored study showed that Tykerb's blood levels increased by 167% when taken with a low-fat meal, compared with taking the drug on an empty stomach, and by 325% after a high-fat meal.
In a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers ruffled some industry feathers by arguing that taking Tykerb with food (THE LABEL SAYS NOT TO) might allow patients to take lower doses, leading to a potential cost savings of 60% off the drug's $2,900-a-month price tag.
Savings could be about 80% if Tykerb were taken with grapefruit juice, since the drug interacts with an enzyme in the gut (CYP3A4) that breaks down drugs before they enter the bloodstream. People with lots of CYP3A5 may have less medicine enter their bloodstream than people who don't have so much.
Grapefruit juice has a compound that temporarily gets rid of CYP3A4, which allows more of a drug to enter the bloodstream. For people who take statins with grapefruit juice, the drug can build up to unhealthy levels in the body.
Some researchers feel that the grapefruit effect could ultimately allow patients to take lower doses of drugs like Tykerb. With oral oncology therapies being very expensive, this may lower the costs by as much as 50% saving hundreds of millions of dollars.
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