Day-to-day variations during clinical drug monitoring of morphine, morphine-3-glucuronide and morphine-6-glucuronide serum concentrations in cancer patients. A prospective observational study.
BACKGROUND
The feasibility of drug monitoring of serum concentrations of morphine, morphine-6-glucuronide (M6G) and morphine-3-glucuronide (M3G) during chronic morphine therapy is not established. One important factor relevant to drug monitoring is to what extent morphine, M6G and M3G serum concentrations fluctuate during stable morphine treatment.


METHODS
We included twenty-nine patients admitted to a palliative care unit receiving oral morphine (n = 19) or continuous subcutaneous (sc) morphine infusions (n = 10). Serum concentrations of morphine, M6G and M3G were obtained at the same time on four consecutive days. If readmitted, the patients were followed for another trial period. Day-to-day variations in serum concentrations and ratios were determined by estimating the percent coefficient of variation (CV = (mean/SD) x100).


RESULTS
The patients' median morphine doses were 90 (range; 20-1460) mg/24 h and 135 (range; 30-440) mg/24 h during oral and sc administration, respectively. Intraindividual fluctuations of serum concentrations estimated by median coefficients of day-to-day variation were in the oral group for morphine 46%, for M6G 25% and for M3G 18%. The median coefficients of variation were lower in patients receiving continuous sc morphine infusions (morphine 10%, M6G 13%, M3G 9%).


CONCLUSIONS
These findings indicate that serum concentrations of morphine and morphine metabolites fluctuate. The fluctuations found in our study are not explained by changes in morphine doses, administration of other drugs or by time for collection of blood samples. As expected the day-to-day variation was lower in patients receiving continuous sc morphine infusions compared with patients receiving oral morphine.
Department of Circulation and Imaging, Faculty of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7489 Trondheim, Norway. pal.klepstad@medisin.ntnu.no
Pål
P
Klepstad
Priscilla
P
Hilton
Jorunn
J
Moen
Stein
S
Kaasa
Petter C
PC
Borchgrevink
Kolbjørn
K
Zahlsen
Ola
O
Dale
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000701:Analgesics, Opioid / Q000097:blood*; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D016903:Drug Monitoring; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009020:Morphine / Q000097:blood*; D009022:Morphine Derivatives / Q000097:blood*; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000097:blood*; D010166:Palliative Care; D011446:Prospective Studies
D000701:Analgesics, Opioid; D009022:Morphine Derivatives; C035349:morphine-6-glucuronide; D009020:Morphine; C018108:morphine-3-glucuronide