Therapeutic drug monitoring

Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is vitally important to optimize therapy for all patients treated with biologics. Monitoring of drug levels and determination of anti-drug antibodies (ADA) is relevant as it can guide treatment decisions to optimize treatment efficacy and cost effectiveness. It brings both under- and overtreatment to light.

All patients may benefit from measurement of serum trough levels of biologics. TDM aims to improve patient care by adjusting the drug dosage at the individual patient level. TDM identifies patients who are undertreated as well as those who are overtreated.

How can drug monitoring help you?

• Find the optimal dose by measuring drug level
• Reveal both over- and undertreatment at early stages, before recurrence of clinical symptoms
• Perform fine-tuning of drug dosage or switch to other therapeutics when necessary

The graph below illustrates how monitoring biologic levels can provide insights that help improve therapeutic efficacy. If levels are on the initial slope of the dose-response curve, achieved clinical improvement is suboptimal, while having a higher drug level will not yield additional clinical benefit, and potentially cause side-effects and result in unnecessary costs.