Chima Igwe
Nigeria
Title: Therapeutic drug monitoring on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy(HAART)
Biography
Biography: Chima Igwe
Abstract
Therapeutic drug Monitoring is used to monitor a patient’s progress in the course of treatment and to enhance their therapeutic outcome of patients on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy(HAART). It is aimed at identifying drug dependent toxicity in other to adjust dose or change regime among these group of patient. This is extremely important for drugs with narrow therapeutic index. Chromatography and Immunoassay can be employed in this process especially as because of its specificity and cost effectiveness in estimation of therapeutic drug monitoring. Although this requires expertise and highly trained personnel for this to be carried out. This is most crucial aspect of therapeutic drug monitoring. The setting up of therapeutic drug monitoring is capital intensive both in terms of equipment and personnel. Nigeria been a developing country suffers is its own set back as it requires political will to enable her carry out effective Therapeutic drug monitoring. Therapeutic drug monitoring team comprises of Medical officer,Pharmacologist,PharmarcistandNurse.Pharmacogentics,clinical toxicologist.Trainining and retraining is highly advocated for Doctors in clinical practice as clinical evidence on its own is not enough to determine toxicity. Regretably in most African Countries, this is not done hence the need for advocacy which is the essence of this paper especially with regard to therapeutic drug monitoring of HAART among HIV patients who will be on life long treatment.