Acute Transient Aminotransferase Elevation is Common With Intrathecal Methotrexate, but Liver Injury is Infrequent
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Hepatotoxicity is a known risk of oral and intravenous methotrexate (MTX), but whether intrathecal (IT) administration causes hepatotoxicity remains unknown. We aimed to explore whether IT-MTX causes acute hepatoxicity. METHODS: Retrospective single-centre analysis of all patients treated with IT-MTX from 2000 to 2020. We compared liver enzymes (LE) at baseline (within 7 days before IT-MTX) to post-MTX (within 7 days after IT-MTX). LE elevation was defined as ≥ 50% increase in LE from baseline and greater than upper limit of normal. Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) was defined based on established criteria. RESULTS: A total of 270 patients (184 adults and 86 paediatric) received IT-MTX and had available LE data. Aminotransferase elevation was seen post-MTX in 107 (40%) patients, of whom 96 (36%) had ALT and 68 (25%) had AST elevation. DILI occurred in 16 (6%) patients. Aminotransferases peaked a median of 4 (3-5) days post-MTX, returning near baseline by day 7. Paediatric patients had higher incidence of aminotransferase elevations and DILI than adults (ALT 51% vs. 28%; AST 41% vs. 18%; DILI 11% vs. 3%; p < 0.01 for all). No significant predictors of LE elevation or DILI were identified, and no patient developed liver failure. The severity of ALT elevation after the first IT-MTX dose did not predict severity of a subsequent dose. CONCLUSION: Acute transient aminotransferase elevation is common after IT-MTX, especially in paediatric patients. Only a fraction of patients developed DILI, which was self-limited with no sensitisation or liver failure.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".