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Side effects of Combivir and Kaletra
Aug 15, 2006
A patient on a combination of Combivir and Kaletra develops elevated liver enzymes with some bone marrow suppression.What other combination should be used in order to stop the side effects of the drugs?
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Response from Dr. Daar
Thank you for your post.
Before I go any further, it is extremely important to make sure that the laboratory abnormalities you describe are indeed caused by the medications. In addition, whether the person has other medical conditions that could be contributing to the changes, such as underlying hepatitis infection. Working with an expert provider can be extremely important in making these types of assessments. Your provider can also help you assess the significance of the laboratory changes which will dictate whether you can continue to be monitored on current therapy, require a change in the regimen or if the mediations need to be stopped until the problems resolve prior to reinitiation of an alternative regimen.
That being said, certainly the AZT (zidovudine) in combivir can be associated with bone marrow suppression, particularly a decrease in the red and white blood cells. In addition, both AZT and Kaletra can cause liver enzyme elevation. If your provider is convinced that AZT is causing the bone marrow suppression then this drug can be substituted with anyone of a number of other related drugs such as abacavir or tenofovir, neither of which cause this problem. If the elevated liver enzymes is caused by AZT then this problem may go away with this change as well. If the liver enzyme elevation is from Kaletra, a protease inhibitor (PI), it is somewhat more difficult to asses what the effect of switching to an alternative PI might have.
As you can probably tell, these are difficult situations. I hope my general comments are of some help, but you really do need to work with your provider to resolve this issue.
Best,
Eric
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