Clinical Pharmacokinetics 1 Flashcards
What are the aims of clinical pharmacokinetics?
Aims to design dosage regimens which:
- Optimize therapeutic response of a drug
- Minimize chance of adverse reactions
What is plasma concentration of a drug a function of?
- The rate of input of the drug into the plasma
- The rate of distribution of the drug to the tissues
- The rate of elimination of the drug
What are the 3 most important pharmacokinetic parameters?
- Volume of distribution
- Clearance
- Bioavailability
What is volume of distribution?
A measure of the apparent space in the body available to contain the drug
What is clearance?
A measure of the body’s ability to eliminate the drug
What is bioavailability?
The fraction of drug absorbed into the systemic circulation
How do we calculate the volume distribution?
Relates the amount of drug in the body to the concentration of drug in the plasma
Vd=(Amount of drug in the body)/ (Plasma drug concentration)
Units= volume
Does the Vd refer to a physiological volume?
The Vd doesn’t necessarily refer to an identifiable physiological volume
-Vd is the volume that would be required to contain all of the drug in the body at the same concentration as it is in the blood
Describe the Vd for a drug retained within the vascular compartment
Drugs that are completely retained within the vascular compartment have a minimum Vd equal to the vascular compartment
-Drugs that have much higher concentrations in the extra vascular tissue than in the vascular compartment have a very high Vd
If a drug is bound to peripheral tissues, or partitioned into body fat, what is its concentration in plasma?
The plasma concentration will be low in these circumstances
as a result, Vd is very high
For example, the Vd for quinacrine is 50,000L in a person whose physical body volume is 70L
The Vd is a…
Proportionality factor that relates the plasma drug concentration of drug to the amount of drug in the body.
-The volume of distribution allows us to convert concentrations to amounts
What is the main use of the volume of distribution ?
The main use of the volume of distribution is to determine the loading dose to quickly achieve a target plasma concentration
How is Vd determined?
- To calculate Vd, we need to know the amount of drug in the body and the plasma drug concentration
- The only time the amount of drug in the body is known accurately is immediately after the drug has been given IV
- If we can determine the plasma concentration at time 0 (C0), then we can calculate the Vd as follows:
Vd= Dose/ C0
How is Vd determined graphically?
A dose of drug is injected IV
The plasma drug concentration is plotted vs time
- Usually, the plot shows two phases
- The rapid fall is the distribution phase
- The slower phase is the elimination phase
We linearize the curve by plotting the logarithm of the drug plasma concentration vs time
What can we extrapolate from log plasma concentration vs time graph?
Extrapolation of the elimination curve to the y-axis, yields the concentration that would have existed at the start if the dose had been instantly distributed
The initial concentration is
C0= dose/ Vd
So,
Vd=dose/C0
How can we calculate quickly calculate a target plasma drug concentration (TC)?
Dose= Vdx TC