title: Fractals also in pharmacokinetics?
abstract: Under certain circumstances the time course of drugs and/or metabolites in body fluids and tissues may show a 'fractal pattern', i.e. manifestations of mainly irregular figures having identical or similar structures in their parts as in the whole. This will be demonstrated in this paper by means of just one example, although many more can be found easily in the literature. It appears that the fractal concept may also be useful in pharmacokinetics to describe the complexity of time-concentration curves by an additional parameter, the 'fractal dimension'. A simple principle is proposed for testing the 'self-similarity' which is useful as accompanying evidence of the fractal dimension.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: H P
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Koch
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zacek
mesh_terms: D000661:Amphetamine / Q000493:pharmacokinetics / Q000652:urine; D006801:Humans; D010599:Pharmacokinetics; D013223:Statistics as Topic
chemical_list: D000661:Amphetamine