BARCO S.

Purpose: Interest in cannabis-based therapies has recently increased, due to the availability of cannabidiol (CBD) for the treatment of epilepsy without psychoactive effects. Therapeutic drug monitoring can prevent drug interactions and minimize drug toxicity. We evaluated a volumetric absorptive microsampling (VAMS) method combined with...

The aim of this work is to evaluate volumetric absorptive microsampling (VAMS) from capillary blood as an alternative strategy for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) in patients treated with the newly availableGW-purified form of cannabidiol (Epidiolex®). Afast ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS)...

Background:Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) is commonly performed on plasma or serum. The use of dried plasma spots (DPSs) could represent a useful tool to facilitate sample shipment to reference laboratories. In this article, the authors describe the application of a commercially available UHPLC-MS/MS method for...

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Adenosine Deaminase 2 Deficiency (DADA2) (OMIM: 607575) is a monogenic, autoin-flammatory disease caused by the loss of functional homozygous or heterozygous mutations in the ADA 2 gene (previously CECR1, Cat Eye Syndrome Chromosome Region 1). A timely diagnosis is crucial to start Anti-TNF therapies that are efficacious in controlling the...

Liquid-chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) is currently the method of choice for untargeted metabolomic analysis. The availability of established protocols to achieve a high confidence identification of metabolites is crucial. The aim of this work is to describe the workflow that we have applied to build an...

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Cannabidiol (CBD) is a promising therapeutic agent with analgesic, myorelaxant, and anti-epileptic actions. Recently, a purified form of CBD (Epidiolex®) has been approved by the Eu-ropean Medicines Agency (EMA) for the treatment of two highly-refractory childhood-onset epi-lepsies (Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome). Given the interindividual...

Background Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of antibiotics in children is of fundamental importance for effective patient management. The use of dried blood spot (DBS) offers a number of advantages over conventional blood collection. The aim of this study is to develop and validate a method to measure piperacillin/tazobactam in DBS. Results...

Aim: DBS might be an appropriate microsampling technique for therapeutic drug monitoring of caffeine in infants. Nevertheless, its application presents several issues that still limit its use. This paper describes a validated DBS-LC-MS/MS method for caffeine. Results: The results of the method validation showed an hematocrit dependence. In the...

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Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common extracranial malignant tumor in children. Although the survival rate of NB has improved over the years, the outcome of NB still remains poor for over 30% of cases. A more accurate risk stratification remains a key point in the study of NB and the availability of novel prognostic biomarkers of "high-risk" at...

Cannabidiol (CBD) exhibits anti-inflammatory, anxiolytic, antiseizure, and neuroprotective proprieties without addictive or psychotropic side effects, as opposed to Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). While recreational cannabis contains higher THC and lower CBD concentrations, medical cannabis contains THC and CBD in different ratios, along with...

Objectives: To evaluate safety and pharmacokinetic parameters (PK) of medical cannabis in add-on for children and young adults with drug-resistant epilepsy. Design, setting: Ten patients (4 females, 6 males, age 2.5–23.2 years) were enrolled in a prospective open trial with a galenic preparation (decoction) of Italian cannabis (FM2, ratio...