A review and assessment of potential sources of ethnic differences in drug responsiveness.
The International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) E5 guidelines were developed to provide a general framework for evaluating the potential impact of ethnic factors on the acceptability of foreign clinical data, with the underlying objective to facilitate global drug development and registration. It is well recognized that all drugs exhibit significant inter-subject variability in pharmacokinetics and pharmacologic response and that such differences vary considerably among individual drugs and depend on a variety of factors. One such potential factor involves ethnicity. The objective of the present work was to perform an extensive review of the world literature on ethnic differences in drug disposition and responsiveness to determine their general significance in relation to drug development and registration. A few examples of suspected ethnic differences in pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics were identified. The available literature, however, was found to be heterologous, including a variety of study designs and research methodologies, and most of the publications were on drugs that were approved a long time ago.
Bjornsson
Thorir D
TD
Wyeth Research, 500 Arcola Road, Collegeville, PA 19426, USA.
Wagner
John A
JA
Donahue
Stephen R
SR
Harper
Dawn
D
Karim
Aziz
A
Khouri
Marlene S
MS
Murphy
William R
WR
Roman
Kristin
K
Schneck
Dennis
D
Sonnichsen
Daryl S
DS
Stalker
Dennis J
DJ
Wise
Stephen D
SD
Dombey
Stuart
S
Loew
Caroline
C
D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D017277:Drug Approval; D015195:Drug Design; D004358:Drug Therapy / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation; D008297:Male; D010599:Pharmacokinetics; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*