Pharmacokinetics plasma concentration

Plasma concentrations, pharmacokinetics, any difficulties with assay methodology... 

Coumarin analog Interacting drug Change in plasma concentration Pharmacokinetic mechanism of interaction Change in pharmacodynamics Ref... 

Bioavailability, Bioequivalence, and Pharmacokinetics. Bioavailabihty can be defined as the amount and rate of absorption of a dmg into the body from an adrninistered dmg product. It is affected by the excipient ingredients in the product, the manufacturing technologies employed, and physical and chemical properties of the dmg itself, eg, particle size and polymorphic form. Two dmg products of the same type, eg, compressed tablets, that contain the same amount of the same dmg are pharmaceutical equivalents, but may have different degrees of bioavailabihty. These are chemical equivalents but are not necessarily bioequivalents. For two pharmaceutically equivalent dmg products to be bioequivalent, they must achieve the same plasma concentration in the same amount of time, ie, have equivalent bioavadabihties. 

The pharmacokinetics of azacitidine shows that it is rapidly absorbed after s.c. administration with the peak plasma concentration occurring after 0.5 h. The bioavailability of s.c. azacitidine relative to i.v. azacitidine is approximately 89%. Urinary excretion is the primary route of elimination of azacitidine and its metabolites. The mean elimination half-lives are about 4 h, regardless of i.v. or s.c. administration. 

An important pharmacokinetic parameter is the time of appearance of the maximum t of the plasma concentration. This can be derived by setting the first derivative of the plasma concentration function in eq. (39.16) equal to zero and solving for t, which yields ... 

In practice, one will seek to obtain an estimate of the elimination constant kp and the plasma volume of distribution Vp by means of a single intravenous injection. These pharmacokinetic parameters are then used in the determination of the required dose D in the reservoir and the input rate constant k (i.e. the drip rate or the pump flow) in order to obtain an optimal steady state plasma concentration... 

Compound (1) suffered from an unfavorable pharmacokinetic profile when studied in rats. It is cleared very rapidly from rat plasma (half-life, t 2 — 0.4/z) and is poorly bioavailable F — 2%), as reflected by the low plasma concentration (area under the plasma concentration-time curve, AUCo oo = 0.2pMh) following a single oral dose of 25mg/kg in rats [42]. The main challenge was to further optimize this series to obtain NS3 protease inhibitors with low-nanomolar cell-based potency (EC5q< 10 nM) and with an adequate pharmacokinetic profile for oral absorption. 

Toremifene is an estrogen receptor antagonist. The pharmacokinetics of toremifene are best described by a two-compartment model, with an a half-life of 4 hours and an elimination half-life of 5 days. Peak plasma concentrations are achieved approximately 3 hours after an oral dose. Toremifene is metabolized extensively, with metabolites found primarily in the feces. Toremifene is used for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer in postmenopausal women with estrogen-receptor-positive or unknown tumors. Toremifene causes hot flashes, vaginal bleeding, thromboembolism, and visual acuity changes. 

A typical semi-log plasma concentration versus time plot is shown in Fig. 4. This figure shows that pharmacokinetic data can also be expressed in terms of a half-life, called the biological half-life, which bears the same relationship to kei as that shown in Eqs. (14) and (15). 

Other applications of the previously described optimization techniques are beginning to appear regularly in the pharmaceutical literature. A literature search in Chemical Abstracts on process optimization in pharmaceuticals yielded 17 articles in the 1990-1993 time-frame. An additional 18 articles were found between 1985 and 1990 for the same narrow subject. This simple literature search indicates a resurgence in the use of optimization techniques in the pharmaceutical industry. In addition, these same techniques have been applied not only to the physical properties of a tablet formulation, but also to the biological properties and the in-vivo performance of the product [30,31]. In addition to the usual tablet properties the authors studied the following pharmacokinetic parameters (a) time of the peak plasma concentration, (b) lag time, (c) absorption rate constant, and (d) elimination rate constant. The graphs in Fig. 15 show that for the drug hydrochlorothiazide, the time of the plasma peak and the absorption rate constant could, indeed, be... 

The CAT model estimates not only the extent of drug absorption, but also the rate of drug absorption that makes it possible to couple the CAT model to pharmacokinetic models to estimate plasma concentration profiles. The CAT model has been used to estimate the rate of absorption for saturable and region-depen-dent drugs, such as cefatrizine [67], In this case, the model simultaneously considers passive diffusion, saturable absorption, GI degradation, and transit. The mass balance equation, Eq. (51), needs to be rewritten to include all these processes ... 

Coupling with its intravenous pharmacokinetic parameters, the extended CAT model was used to predict the observed plasma concentration-time profiles of cefatrizine at doses of 250, 500, and 1000 mg. The human experimental data from Pfeffer et al. [82] were used for comparison. The predicted peak plasma concentrations and peak times were 4.3, 7.9, and 9.3 qg/mL at 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0 hr, in agreement with the experimental mean peak plasma concentrations of... 

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... 

In spite of its limitations, the ACAT model combined with modeling of saturable processes has become a powerful tool in the study of oral absorption and pharmacokinetics. To our knowledge, it is the only tool that can translate in vitro data from early drug discovery experiments all the way to plasma concentration profiles and nonlinear dose-relationship predictions. As more experimental data become available, we believe that the model will become more comprehensive and its predictive capabilities will be further enhanced. 

Piel et al. compared the intravenous pharmacokinetics of miconazole in sheep after its administration in a polyoxyl-35 castor oil/lactic acid mixture, a 100 pM hydroxylpropyl-/l-cyclodextrin-50 pM lactic acid solution, and a 50 pM sulfobutyl ether (SBE7)-/i-cyclodextrin 50 pM lactic acid solution. Intravenous administration of 4 mg/kg of miconazole was completed within 5 min [108]. There were no differences of the miconazole blood plasma concentration versus time for the three dosage forms. The half-life of distribution was <2.4 min. Both hydroxylpropyl-/ -... 

Piel et al. [109] studied the pharmacokinetics of miconazole after intravenous administration to six sheep (4 mg/kg) of three aqueous solutions - a marketed micellar solution containing polyoxyl-35 castor oil was compared with two solutions both containing 50 pM lactic acid and a cyclodextrin derivative (100 pM hydro-xylpropyl-/l-cyclodextrin or 50 pM sulfobutyl ether (SBE7)-/i-cyclodextrin. This work demonstrated that these cyclodextrin derivatives have no effect on the pharmacokinetics of miconazole by comparison with the micellar solution. The plasma concentration-time curves have shown that there is no significant difference between the three solutions. 

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