Nephrol Dial Transplant (2002) 17: 2047-2051
© 2002 European Renal Association-European Dialysis and Transplant Association
Editorial Comments
Once-weekly erythropoietic therapy: is there a difference between the available preparations?
Department of Renal Medicine, King's College Hospital, London, UK
Keywords: darbepoetin alfa; epoetin; epoetin-beta; erythropoietic therapy
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Introduction
Epoetin administration once weekly to renal failure patients is not new, and indeed a series of publications examining this frequency of administration appeared in the early 1990s [1–11]. During the last decade, however, nephrologists largely settled on twice- or thrice-weekly administration for most of their patients, and the small number who end up on once-weekly dosing are generally those who are responding well to epoetin therapy in the maintenance phase of treatment. It is certainly less common to start such patients on once-weekly administration, although a large Austrian multicentre study in pre-dialysis patients did utilize a treatment regimen of 10 000 U of epoetin once weekly [6].
There is little doubt that the introduction of darbepoetin alfa around the middle of last year once again focused our minds on the concept of once-weekly dosing [12]. This product was specifically developed
Once-weekly administration of epoetin
Once-weekly administration of darbepoetin alfa
Comparison of once-weekly epoetin with once-weekly darbepoetin alfa
Conclusions
Editor's note
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I. C. Macdougall Comment on letter by Deray Nephrol. Dial. Transplant., July 1, 2004; 19(7): 1940 - 1940. [Full Text] [PDF]
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I. C. Macdougall Reply Nephrol. Dial. Transplant., May 1, 2004; 19(5): 1331 - 1331. [Full Text] [PDF]
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