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Updated: Jun 7, 2026

5/6th Nephrectomy in Combination with High Salt Diet and Nitric Oxide Synthase Inhibition to Induce Chronic Kidney Disease in the Lewis Rat
Published on: July 3, 2013
Delayed elimination of SN-38 in cancer patients with severe renal failure
Ken-ichi Fujita1, Yu Sunakawa, Keisuke Miwa
1Department of Medical Oncology, International Medical Center-Comprehensive Cancer Center, Saitama Medical University, 1397-1 Yamane, Hidaka, Saitama, 350-1298, Japan. fujitak@saitama-med.ac.jp
Abstract:
This prospective study is designed to examine the effects of severe renal failure on the pharmacokinetics of irinotecan. The pharmacokinetics of irinotecan, 7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin (SN-38), and SN-38 glucuronide (SN-38G) in three cancer patients with severe renal failure [creatinine clearance (Ccr) ≤ 20 ml/min] who were undergoing dialysis and received 100 mg/m(2) irinotecan as monotherapy were prospectively compared with those in five cancer patients with normal renal function (Ccr ≥ 60 ml/min). To ensure that the subjects had similar genetic backgrounds of UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) 1A1, patients with UGT1A1*1/*1, *1/*6, or *1/*28 were enrolled. The estimated terminal elimination rate constant of SN-38 in patients undergoing dialysis was approximately one tenth of that in patients with normal renal function (P = 0.025). Approximately 50% of SN-38 was dialyzed with a 2.1-m(2) dialysis membrane, whereas 27% was dialyzed with a 1.5-m(2) membrane. Our results showed that the elimination of SN-38 was significantly delayed in patients with severe renal failure compared with patients with normal renal function. We demonstrated that SN-38 was partly dialyzed.
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