I would be intrigued to hear further comments from Munro et al (Reference Munro, O'Sullivan and Andrews1999) concerning the apparent paradox of the inverse relationship between dose and risk, both of neutropenia and of agranulocytosis.
A curious interaction of enzymes and metabolites, as briefly alluded too, is a fascinating possibility; other more banal explanations might also be entertained. One imagines the authors considered the possibility of an artefact. The agranulocytosis risk was the raison d'être for the Clozaril Patient Monitoring Service (CPMS); so we may reasonably propose a tendency to (a) reduce the dose, and (b) fail to raise it, in those who exhibited lower white cell counts. Could such a mechanism produce these results ? The data presented do not appear sufficient to rule out such an explanation.
Do the authors wish to comment on why the baseline white blood cell count should be associated with hazard of neutropenia but seemingly (from absence of specific data and comment) not with agranulocytosis.
Psychiatrists have, over the years, made minimal use of therapeutic drug monitoring and one presumes from this report that this was not incorporated in any way into the CPMS. Is there a lesson here and might that have elucidated the putative ‘ratio of metabolites’ question ?
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