Tacrolimus Test in Fort

To determine the correct Tacrolimus dosage for you before beginning therapy

Tacrolimus is a specialised test that is only conducted on patients scheduled for a Transplant. The drug tacrolimus helps reduce the chances of organ rejection in a transplant patient. Tacrolimus drug is administered twice a day before or after meals. It is important to maintain optimal levels of this drug. Too little means the organ may be rejected and higher dosages in the blood could lead to toxicity.

Our body has a robust defence or immune system, whenever our body senses any agent that doesn’t belong to its own, it initiates a series of attacks to get rid of that agent. These series of attacks are termed as “immune responses” or “immune attack”. However, the body doesn’t distinguish between any external agents, and attacks each of them. During certain surgeries like kidney or liver transplant, where the respective organs from other person’s body are planted into the needy patient or “recipient”, our body can still recognise the newly transplanted organ as foreign and attack it. This phenomenon is termed as “organ rejection”. To avoid that certain medications are given to patients, termed as “immunosuppressants”. Tacrolimus is an immunosuppressive drug that is given orally or intravenously to people who have had a kidney, liver, heart, or other organ transplant. It is a potent drug that helps to prevent rejection of the transplanted organ as a result of immune attack by the body. This test measures the amount of tacrolimus in the blood.