Physiologically based pharmacokinetic tissue-blood partition coefficients

Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) Model—is comprised of a series of compartments representing organs or tissue groups with realistic weights and blood flows. These models require a variety of physiological information tissue volumes, blood flow rates to tissues, cardiac output, alveolar ventilation rates and, possibly membrane permeabilities. The models also utilize biochemical information such as air/blood partition coefficients, and metabolic parameters. PBPK models are also called biologically based tissue dosimetry models. 

Another method of predicting human pharmacokinetics is physiologically based pharmacokinetics (PB-PK). The normal pharmacokinetic approach is to try to fit the plasma concentration-time curve to a mathematical function with one, two or three compartments, which are really mathematical constructs necessary for curve fitting, and do not necessarily have any physiological correlates. In PB-PK, the model consists of a series of compartments that are taken to actually represent different tissues [75-77] (Fig. 6.3). In order to build the model it is necessary to know the size and perfusion rate of each tissue, the partition coefficient of the compound between each tissue and blood, and the rate of clearance of the compound in each tissue. Although different sources of errors in the models have been... 

A physiologically based pharmacokinetics (PBPK) model based on the ventilation rate, cardiac output, tissue blood flow rates, and volumes as well as measured tissue/air and blood/air partition coefficients has been developed (Medinsky et al. 1989a Travis et al. 1990). Experimentally determined data and model simulations indicated that during and after 6 hours of inhalation exposure to benzene, mice metabolized benzene more efficiently than rats (Medinsky et al. 1989a). After oral exposure, mice and rats appeared to metabolize benzene similarly up to oral doses of 50 mg/kg, above which rats metabolized more benzene than did mice on a per kg body weight basis (Medinsky et al. 1989b). This model may be able to predict the human response based on animal data. Benzene metabolism followed Michaelis-Menton kinetics in vivo primarily in the liver, and to a lesser extent in the bone marrow. Additional information on PBPK modeling is presented in Section 2.3.5. 

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