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High Bili on Tasigna

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone has experienced this with Tasigna. Any help would be appreciated.
I recently switched to Tasigna from Gleevac a few months back and was put on 300mg twice a day. Gleevac couldn't seem to get me to MMR after two years.
Slowly my Bili Total began to rise and eventually hit 3.8. My Alt, Ast also were up so my Dr. took me of for 2 1/2 weeks until my numbers came back down. I restarted at 300mg once a day and everything held ok. After two weeks of 300 a day he had me go back up to 300 twice a day as before. They shot right back up again within 2 weeks.

He then had me reduce to 400mg once a day with no break and Bili is now at 4.0 now. AST 56, ALT 127. I have absolutely no side effects I can feel or see.
I'm sure I'm going to have to take another break.

At this point I'm getting very upset. What to do?

Thanks in Advance!

Hi,

I also had ast/alt elevations in my early days of starting tasigna - this is something that can happen and I know of at least 2-3 others who had experienced raised levels. My oncologist was happy to see the levels goto 3x upper normal levels before suspending the meds - i never hit the 3x normal. Fortunately, my levels went back to their normal and have been good since. While my levels were elevated I stayed off alcohol completely to give my liver the best possible chance.

A fellow CML'er and I have formed a theory about raised levels and the impact of exercise and weight lifting specifically. If you are exercising maybe just scale back a bit and see if it helps.

I think your doc is being sensible with the breaks and I hope it settles down soon. There's always sprycel which may work better for you considering gleevec hasn't given the best response in the time available and is quite similar to tasigna. I find my tasigna side effects are cyclical and typically settle down.

Let us know how you get on

Chris