Conditions: Absence; Kidney
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 40
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
This study's focus is to compare the level effectiveness and safety of regimens involving Sirolimus, Cellcept and steroid to Prograf, Sirolimus and steroid in African-American recipients of kidney transplants.

Detailed description:
A major concern in transplantation is finding a successful regimen of medications to lower the potential for the body to reject the newly transplanted organ. The regimens in kidney transplantation include tacrolimus, sirolimus, mycophenolate mofetil and steroids. This study will compare the effectiveness and safety of a regimen including Sirolimus, Prograf, and steroids compared to a regimen including Sirolimus, Cellcept and steroids. These regimens have already been researched in the Caucasian population, and both drug regimens are FDA approved. This study's focus is on the effectiveness and safety of these regimens in African-Americans.

Arms:
arm 1: At the time of transition patients randomized into this arm of the study will receive loading doses of sirolimus for two days and then 5mg PO daily. Twenty-four hour troughs will be checked per the schedule to ensure and monitor the therapeutic concentrations of 8-12ng/ml.

Patients randomized into this arm of the study will continue their current dosing regimen and frequency of mycophenolate mofetil. Serum trough level monitoring of mycophenolic acid will not be performed unless clinically warranted per standard of care and dosage adjustments from such levels will be made only with consent of the study primary investigator. arm 2: Tacrolimus dosing is based on 12-hour whole blood trough concentrations. Target blood concentration is 2-5 ng/ml.

At the time of transition patients randomized into this arm of the study will receive loading doses of Sirolimus for two days and then 5mg PO daily. Twenty-four hour troughs will be checked per the schedule to ensure and monitor the therapeutic concentrations of 8-12ng/ml.

Interventions: intervention 1: rapamune, mycophenolate mofetil and steroid intervention 2: tacrolimus, sirolimus and steroid
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: At the time of transition patients randomized into this arm of the study will receive loading doses of sirolimus for two days and then 5mg PO daily. Twenty-four hour troughs will be checked per the schedule to ensure and monitor the therapeutic concentrations of 8-12ng/ml.

Patients randomized into this arm of the study will continue their current dosing regimen and frequency of mycophenolate mofetil. Serum trough level monitoring of mycophenolic acid will not be performed unless clinically warranted per standard of care and dosage adjustments from such levels will be made only with consent of the study primary investigator. intervention 2: Tacrolimus dosing is based on 12-hour whole blood trough concentrations. Target blood concentration is 2-5 ng/ml.

At the time of transition patients randomized into this arm of the study will receive loading doses of Sirolimus for two days and then 5mg PO daily. Twenty-four hour troughs will be checked per the schedule to ensure and monitor the therapeutic concentrations of 8-12ng/ml.

Protocol document: