Population pharmacokinetics I: background, concepts, and models.
OBJECTIVE
To present and emphasize the background, foundations, utility, and conceptual underlying theory of the population pharmacokinetic (PPK) approach with an examination of the advantages when compared with other approaches of pharmacokinetic modeling.


METHODS
Information on PPK was retrieved from a MEDLINE search (1979-June 2002) of literature and a bibliographic review of review articles and books.


METHODS
All articles identified from data sources were evaluated and relevant information was included in this review.


RESULTS
PPK plays a pivotal role in developing dosing strategies for direct patient care and in drug development. PPK is valuable because it targets the patient group that will eventually receive the drug of interest, quantitates pharmacokinetic variability at several levels, and seeks to explain those sources of variability.


CONCLUSIONS
PPK models have great utility and the applications are many. They are very different from single-subject pharmacokinetic models and therefore require different approaches to model development.
Ette
Ene I
EI
Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA. Ene_Ette@vpharm.com
Williams
Paul J
PJ
D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000378:metabolism; D010599:Pharmacokinetics
D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations