High vs. Standard Dose Rifampicin for Effusive Tuberculous Pericarditis

Simulations were performed to determine the dose of RIF required to achieve the most equitable drug exposures across the weight range, 30 to 100 kg. Demographic data of a reference cohort of TB patients (n = 1225), with or without HIV-1 coinfection, recruited in clinical trials conducted in West Africa and South Africa were used for the simulations35-38. An additional 12 250 virtual patients were generated using the weight and height distributions of the 1225 patients to increase the number of patients with a weight close to the boundaries of the weight range. Parameter estimates of the population PK model for RIF were used to simulate (100 replicates) RIF exposures22. Four dosing scenarios were evaluated using the weight-band based dosing with 4-drug FDC tablets and extra RIF tablets with each tablet containing 150 mg or 600 mg RIF. The FDC tablets were assumed to have 20% reduced bioavailability based on data from a clinical trial where the same formulation was used