Is there still room for therapeutic drug monitoring of linezolid in patients with tuberculosis?

Abstract

Bolhuis et al. [1] recently reported the results of a retrospective study aimed at investigating linezolid safety and tolerability in relation to linezolid exposure in 58 patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. As one of the main findings, they observed no significant differences in linezolid area under the curve from 0 to 24 h (AUC0–24) or linezolid trough concentrations between patients experiencing or not experiencing drug-related adverse events. These findings apparently argue against a potential role of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) as a feasible tool to optimise linezolid dosing in the day-by-day management of patients with tuberculosis. A study of linezolid TDM in tuberculosis is at odds with studies in Gram-positive bacterial infections <http://ow.ly/WXKQY>