This simulation suggests that ribavirin dosage (in combination with pegylated interferon alfa-2b) for patients with chronic hepatitis C should be based on body weight.

This analysis confirms earlier observations of progressive pharmacokinetic changes in the patients with hepatitis C during 48 weeks of treatment. The absence of a relationship between toxicity or efficacy variables and interferon concentration or activity (within a dose level) suggests that clinical management of patients (eg, for efficacy or to manage toxicity) should be based on clinically derived dosing guidelines rather than on serum concentration or activity criteria.

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Phytohemagglutinin (PHA) is generally regarded as a weak immunosuppressive agent. Calne et al. (1) initially reported that it can potentiate the immunosuppressive action of azathioprine in dogs with renal allografts when the two substances were given together. Later on, Gertner et al. (2) recorded again that combination of PHA with either azathioprine or prednisone increased markedly the survival time of skin allografts in dogs and decreased the need for toxic doses of azathioprine and prednisone. Recently, Stefani and Moore (3) suggested that there might be a synergistic effect of PHA and antilymphocyte serum (ALS) in preventing allograft rejection in the clinical situation. In view of the previous evidence that PHA can significantly prolong the survival time of skin xenografts in mice (4) and that antithymocyte serum (ATS) has a greater immunosuppressive effect than ALS on allograft survival (5, 6), it seemed justifiable to do a preliminary experiment concerning skin xenografts in mice treated with a combination of PHA and ATS to see whether a significant synergistic effect could be obtained in this model.