Population Pharmacokinetics I: Background, Concepts, and Models

• Published in: The Annals of pharmacotherapy Vol. 38; no. 10; pp. 1702 - 1706
• Main Authors: Ette, Ene I, Williams, Paul J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA Harvey Whitney Books 01-10-2004; SAGE Publications
• Subjects: Humans; Models, Biological; Pharmaceutical Preparations - administration & dosage; Pharmaceutical Preparations - metabolism; Pharmacokinetics; population pharmacokinetics
• ISSN: 1060-0280; 1542-6270
• DOI: 10.1345/aph.1D374

OBJECTIVE
To present and emphasize the background, foundations, utility, and conceptual
underlying theory of the population pharmacokinetic (PPK) approach with an examination
of the advantages when compared with other approaches of pharmacokinetic modeling.
DATA SOURCES
Information on PPK was retrieved from a MEDLINE search (1979—June 2002) of literature
and a bibliographic review of review articles and books.
STUDY SELECTION AND DATA EXTRACTION
All articles identified from data sources were evaluated and relevant information was
included in this review.
DATA SYNTHESIS
PPK plays a pivotal role in developing dosing strategies for direct patient care and in
drug development. PPK is valuable because it targets the patient group that will
eventually receive the drug of interest, quantitates pharmacokinetic variability at
several levels, and seeks to explain those sources of variability.
CONCLUSIONS
PPK models have great utility and the applications are many. They are very different
from single-subject pharmacokinetic models and therefore require different approaches to
model development.