Statin Pharmacokinetics Pre and Post Gastric Bypass Surgery Clinical Trial
Official title:
Rosuvastatin Pharmacokinetic (PK) Study in Caucasian and Asian Morbid Obese Patients
Statins are the first-line and most commonly prescribed drugs for the prevention of
cardiovascular diseases and stroke in the world. Our preliminary studies suggest that
Caucasians might have a higher risk of developing potentially life-threatening drug-drug
interactions than Asians when taking statins. Drug-drug interactions occur in the body when
two or more drugs interact in a way that alters their effectiveness and/or toxicity. These
interactions are becoming an increasingly severe problem with statin usage since patients at
higher risk for cardiovascular diseases also take statins combined with many other drugs,
such as antihypertensive and diabetic drugs. Our study is aimed at understanding the
molecular factors and providing a sound basis for the interethnic dosage and response
differences for statins.
Drug-transporting proteins in intestine and liver tissues are responsible for taking up
statins into the blood. It is hypothesized that there are interethnic function differences of
these proteins and that they account for differences in statin blood levels between
Caucasians and Asians and the frequency and/or severity of their respective drug-drug
interactions. A clinical study will be conducted with Caucasian and Asian subjects undergoing
gastric bypass surgery so excess intestine and liver tissue can be acquired as part of the
standard procedure. Protein levels will be quantified in the tissues and correlate them with
different statin blood levels.
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