Population Pharmacokinetics

Variability in exposure to a drug leads to variability in the clinical response across a patient population (Rowland et al., Variability in drug therapy: description, estimation, and control. Raven, New York, 1985). Estimating the variability of the PK (pharmacokinetics) across a patient population requires data obtained from a large study, typically including more than 100 patients. For ethical and practical reasons, pharmacokinetic properties of a drug are difficult to study in large numbers of patients using the traditional approach.