Does simultaneous analysis of doxorubicin and doxorubicinol in plasma allow for monitoring of doxorubicin toxicity in breast cancer patients?
A simultaneous analytical method successfully measured plasma doxorubicin and doxorubicinol in breast cancer patients, facilitating the monitoring of cumulative doses and associated cardiomyopathy risk.
This method was linear in the range of 1-1000 ng/mL for doxorubicin and 0.5-500 ng/mL for doxorubicinol. This method was successfully used to analyze doxorubicin and doxorubicinol, simultaneously, using hexamethylphosphoramide as the internal standard, in the plasma of breast cancer patients. Results showed that the measured concentrations of doxorubicin and doxorubicinol ranged between 12.54-620.01 ng/mL and 1.10-27.00 ng/mL, respectively. The measured cumulative doses of doxorubicin ranged between 48.76 and 319.01 mg/m2; thus, the risk of cardiomyopathy in the surveyed patients was under 4%, according to literature.
Harahap et al. (Sat,) studied this question.