NCT03389061

Bioequivalence Study of Crushed Sofosbuvir/Velpatasvir Compared to the Whole Tablet

• Status: Withdrawn
• Phase: Phase 4
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 0 (actual)
• Sponsor: Radboud University Medical Center · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Epclusa® is a pan-genotypic, once-daily tablet for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection containing the NS5B- polymerase inhibitor sofosbuvir (SOF, nucleotide analogue) 400 mg and the NS5A inhibitor velpatasvir (VEL) 100 mg. For patients with swallowing difficulties, administration of whole tablets can be problematic. In addition, HCV patients that are hospitalized (at intensive care units) due to severe illness (co-infections/ liver failure) might not be able to swallow medication. Therefore it is useful to know whether it is possible to administer SOF/VEL through a different route, like a feeding tube. In daily practice, information about the safety and efficacy of crushed tablets is lacking which might result in interruption or discontinuation of expensive HCV therapy. However, it is not recommended to interrupt treatment because there is no evidence about the efficacy of the therapy after discontinuation (and restart). Currently, patients and healthcare professionals are crushing SOF/VEL tablets without information about efficacy and safety. Depending on the biopharmaceutical characteristics of a drug formulation, crushing tablets can lead to altered pharmacokinetics of drugs. It is important to know whether pharmacokinetic parameters are influenced by crushing of tablets; both a decrease and an increase in exposure may occur. A decrease of the plasma concentrations of SOF and/or VEL potentially reduces the therapeutic effect of the drugs. Higher doses or switching to other HCV-drugs might be needed. In contrast, in case a higher Cmax,ss and/or exposure occurs there might be an increased risk of toxicity. As a result, crushing the drug is a contra-indication based on the available data. Therefore this study will be conducted to investigate whether a crushed SOF/VEL tablet is bioequivalent to SOF/VEL as a whole tablet.

Conditions

• HCV

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DRUG	sofosbuvir/velpatasvir tablet	Single-dose SOF/VEL as a whole tablet in a fasted state.
DRUG	sofosbuvir/velpatasvir crushed	Single-dose crushed SOF/VEL in a fasted state.

Timeline

• Start date: 2018-04-01
• Primary completion: 2019-03-22
• Completion: 2019-03-22
• First posted: 2018-01-03
• Last updated: 2020-12-07

Locations

3 sites across 2 countries: Germany, Netherlands