Development of a Therapeutic Drug Monitoring strategy for Prednisolone
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Development of a Therapeutic Drug Monitoring strategy for Prednisolone
IRAS ID
159137
Contact name
John Geen
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cwm Taf University Health Board
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 4 days
Research summary
Difficult-to-treat asthma represents a small but significant number of patients that fail to achieve asthma control despite being prescribed high doses of inhaled steroids plus add on therapy or with oral steroids. Poor compliance, including poor inhaler technique, or inadequate use of medication is the most common reason why these patients fail to achieve good control.
Prednisolone is the most commonly prescribed oral corticosteroid in the management and treatment of patients with difficult-to-treat asthma. The study Development of a Therapeutic Drug Monitoring strategy for Prednisolone study will develop and validate a strategy to measure prednisolone compliance in patients with difficult-to-treat asthma.
We will recruit 30 patients with difficult-to-treat asthma who are taking prednisolone medication for their asthma. We will collect a urine sample from these patients before and after they have taken their prednisolone medication. A blood sample will also be taken when they attend clinic. These samples will allow us to develop and validate a new laboratory test that will provide a more informative approach to monitoring compliance in this group of patients. We will also obtain urine and blood samples from 15 health volunteers to act as a control group and 15 asthmatic patients that are taking inhaled corticosteroids but not prednisolone to control their asthma.
REC name
Wales REC 1
REC reference
14/WA/1187
Date of REC Opinion
24 Nov 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion