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GUIDANCE DOCUMENT

Drug-Induced Liver Injury: Premarketing Clinical Evaluation July 2009

Final
Docket Number:
FDA-2008-D-0128
Issued by:
Guidance Issuing Office
Center for Drug Evaluation and Research
Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

This guidance is intended to assist the pharmaceutical industry and other investigators who are conducting new drug development in assessing the potential for a drug2 to cause severe liver injury (i.e., irreversible liver failure that is fatal or requires liver transplantation). In particular, the guidance addresses how laboratory measurements that signal the potential for such druginduced liver injury (DILI) can be obtained and evaluated during drug development. This evaluation is important because most drugs that cause severe DILI do so infrequently; typical drug development databases with up to a few thousand subjects exposed to a new drug will not show any cases. Databases may, however, show evidence or signals of a drug’s potential for severe DILI if the clinical and laboratory data are properly evaluated for evidence of lesser injury that may not be severe, but may predict the ability to cause more severe injuries. This guidance describes an approach that can be used to distinguish signals of DILI that identify drugs likely to cause severe liver injury from signals that do not suggest such a potential. This guidance does not address issues of preclinical evaluation for signals of DILI, nor the detection and assessment of DILI after drug approval and marketing.


Submit Comments

You can submit online or written comments on any guidance at any time (see 21 CFR 10.115(g)(5))

If unable to submit comments online, please mail written comments to:

Dockets Management
Food and Drug Administration
5630 Fishers Lane, Rm 1061
Rockville, MD 20852

All written comments should be identified with this document's docket number: FDA-2008-D-0128.

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