Drug absorption evaluation in the presence of changes in clearance: an algorithm and computer program for deconvolution with exact clearance correction.

Most commonly drug absorption is evaluated with a reference dosing given on separate occasions. The assumption that no change in drug disposition is taking place between the drug administrations is often violated resulting in errors in the calculations. A novel deconvolution method is presented which exactly compensates for a change in drug clearance. The method is based on a model independent disposition decomposition-recomposition technique. The distribution function is obtained from an i.v. administration by disposition decomposition. This distribution function is assembled together with the elimination kinetics containing the perturbed clearance to construct the perturbed disposition function in the subsequent disposition recomposition operation. The perturbed absorption response is finally deconvolved using the corresponding perturbed disposition function. It is shown that the perturbed clearance can be obtained from the log-linear terminal disposition phase once the distribution function has been obtained from an i.v. administration. The proposed method is implemented in an algorithm and computer program DCONB and demonstrated using human cimetidine drug level data from an i.v. and oral administration. The usage of DCONB is identical to DECONV previously published. It requires only regular sums of exponentials to be fitted to drug level data. Such fittings are routinely done in pharmacokinetics thereby enabling DCONB to be implemented very simply.