What should I monitor with zidovudine?

What should I monitor with zidovudine?

Zidovudine may decrease the number of certain cells in your blood, including red and white blood cells. Tell your doctor if you have or have ever had a low number of any type of blood cells or any blood disorders such as anemia (a lower than normal number of red blood cells) or bone marrow problems.

What are Zalcitabine used for?

Zalcitabine is an oral medication that is used for the treatment of infections with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is in a class of drugs called reverse transcriptase inhibitors, which also includes lamivudine (Epivir), zidovudine (Retrovir), didanosine (Videx), and stavudine (Zerit).

Which of the following side effects of zidovudine Retrovir presents the most serious consequences?

Hematologic Toxicity/Bone Marrow Suppression In patients with advanced symptomatic HIV-1 disease, anemia and neutropenia were the most significant adverse events observed.

Which ARV drug causes anemia?

However, Zidovudine (ZDV), an element of some ART regimens and one of the first-line antiretroviral drugs for treating HIV infected adults in low resource countries (11), is identified as the commonest cause of drug associated anemia (12,13).

What is the mechanism of action of Zalcitabine?

Mechanism of action This active metabolite works as a substrate for HIV reverse transcriptase, and also by incorporation into the viral DNA, hence terminating the chain elongation due to the missing hydroxyl group. Since zalcitabine is a reverse transcriptase inhibitor it possesses activity only against retroviruses.

Does zidovudine cause Macrocytic anemia?

Abstract. Objective: Zidovudine is a well known cause of macrocytosis. However, many HIV-infected patients develop macrocytosis even though they do not receive zidovudine. The aim of this case-control study was to evaluate other causes of high mean corpuscular volumes (MCV) in HIV infected patients.

How does zidovudine cause anemia?

The exact mechanism of anemia is still unknown. It was hypothesized that AZT may suppress erythropoesis or inhibit erythroid stem cells, thus ensuring pure red-cell aplasia (i.e; decreased reticulocyte counts and hemoglobin levels without hemolysis or blood loss), increasing MCV and elevating erythropoietin level.