title: Medication compliance as a feature in drug development.
abstract: Well-designed clinical trials maximize the information that can be obtained regarding the clinical pharmacology of a drug and, in turn, can streamline and enhance the drug development process. Until recently, little emphasis has been placed on integrating the role of variability in individual patterns of drug-taking into the drug development process. With the use of electronic monitoring, the temporal relationship between an individual's pattern of dosing and the prescribed regimen may be examined, and individual drug exposure may be estimated based on the actual history of dosing. As a result, accurate estimation of exposure-response relationships (or surrogate markers of response) can be obtained. Considerations in the design of clinical trials must therefore be expanded to include appropriate methods to measure compliance, sufficient frequency of monitoring to allow the time course of response to be mapped, and the use of statistically valid methods of data analysis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Stanford University Medical Center, California 94305-5113, USA.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kastrissios
authors.forename: T F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Blaschke
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D004334:Drug Administration Schedule; D016903:Drug Monitoring; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D010349:Patient Compliance; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D016312:Treatment Refusal
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations