Development of a sequential linked pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic simulation model for ivabradine in healthy volunteers.

Ivabradine is a novel bradycardic agent that has been developed for the prevention of angina. Ivabradine has an active metabolite S-18982. The aim of the study was to develop a linked pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic simulation model for the description of exercise-induced heart rate. The pharmacodynamic data (heart rate) were pooled from two studies and included a total of 78 healthy subjects. The data consisted of multiple dose oral administration of ivabradine. The multiple dose regimens were administered every 12 h. There were eight active dosing levels and placebo, and a no-dose run in the period before each study. The modelling was performed using the NONMEM software. Both ivabradine and S-18982 possess bradycardic activity, although the extent of the activity of both could not be determined from the data available. A multiple ligand pharmacodynamic model provided the best fit to the data. The model was assessed in terms of its posterior predictive performance and was able to describe the original data adequately when used for simulation purposes.