Aspects of chronopharmacology and chronotherapy in pediatrics.

Pediatric chronopharmacological findings until now have been limited to circadian changes in children from ages 6 to 15 years. This means that data in newborns and even in infants of 1 year are not available and other bioperiodicities with periods of about-1-year (infradian rhythms) have not been explored in older children. Biologic time-related changes have been documented for phenytoin and theophylline with regard to pharmacokinetics, for orciprenaline with regard to bronchodilation, and for corticosteroids as well as anticancer agents with regard to their effectiveness. Despite the limited number of experiments performed to date, it is already possible to state that a chronopharmacological approach provides better precision in pharmacologic study than the conventional approach not using time-related data and better therapeutics can be achieved with the help of chronopharmacological facts since appropriate timing in administration of medicine usually enhances its desired and/or reduces its undesired effects.