Estimating time to steady state using the effective rate of drug accumulation.

Unless all of a drug is eliminated during each dosing interval, the plasma concentrations within a dosing interval will increase until the time course of change in plasma concentrations becomes invariant from one dosing interval to the next, resulting in steady state. A simple method for estimating drug concentration time to steady state based on multiple dose area under the plasma concentration-time curve and effective rate of drug accumulation is presented. Several point estimates and confidence intervals for time to 90% of steady state are compared, and a recommendation is made on how to summarize and present the results.