Flucytosine and False Elevation of Serum Creatinine Level

Excerpt

To the editor: It has recently come to our attention that flucytosine can produce a falsely elevated serum creatinine.

A 63-year-old white man had been treated with steroids for a blood dyscrasia. He presented in January 1984 with a 1-month history of headache, fever, eye pain, confusion and dysarthria. He was diagnosed as having cryptococcal meningitis and was treated with amphotericin B (0.4 mg/kg body weight •d) and flucytosine (125 mg/kg body weight •d). During his treatment blood samples for serum creatinine were run simultaneously on both the ACA (Dupont Instruments, Wilmington, Delaware) and EKTACHEM (Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, New