page_title: Management of thalassemia
section_title: Administration and action
hierarchical_section_title: Management of thalassemia / Medication / Deferasirox / Administration and action
caption_attribution_description: Ball-and-stick model of deferasirox chelating iron. Created using ACD/ChemSketch 10.0, Accelrys DS Visualizer Pro 1.7 and GIMP.
context_page_description: Treatment of the inherited blood disorder thalassemia depends upon the level of severity. For mild forms of the condition, advice and counseling are often all that are necessary. For more severe forms, treatment may consist in blood transfusion; chelation therapy to reverse iron overload, using drugs such as deferoxamine, deferiprone, or deferasirox; medication with the antioxidant indicaxanthin to prevent the breakdown of hemoglobin; or a bone marrow transplant using material from a compatible donor, or from the patient's mother. Removal of the spleen could theoretically help to reduce the need for blood transfusions in people with thalassaemia major or intermedia but there is currently no reliable evidence from clinical trials about its effects. Population screening has had some success as a preventive measure.
context_section_description: Deferasirox is most commonly marketed under the brand name Exjade.  It has one key advantage over desferoxamine in that it can be taken orally in pill form, and so does not require intravenous or subcutaneous administration. With a terminal elimination half life of 8–16 hours, the deferasirox pill can be taken just once everyday.
  A once-daily dose of 20 mg/kg of body weight has been found to be sufficient for most patients for the maintenance of liver iron concentration (LIC) levels, which are usually measured as mg of iron per g of liver tissue. Larger doses may be required for some patients in order to reduce LIC levels. The ability of deferasirox to effectively reduce LIC levels has been well documented.  One study demonstrated that after 4–5 years of deferasirox treatment the mean LIC levels of patients decreased from 17.4 ± 10.5 to 9.6 ± 8.0 mg Fe/g.  This study showed that long-term treatment did result in a sustainable reduction in the iron burden faced by patients receiving blood transfusions for thalassemia.
  An additional benefit of the use of deferasirox instead of desferoxamine is that, unlike desferoxamine, early studies have indicated that deferasirox does not have a significant impact on the growth and development of pediatric thalassemia patients.  In a study by Cappellini et al. it was shown that children receiving the treatment displayed continual near-normal growth and development over a 5-year study period.
caption: Deferasirox-Iron (III) complex
exif: {}