Population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) modelling of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis following treatment with GnRH analogues.

Aims: To develop a population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) model of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis describing the changes in luteinizing hormone (LH) and testosterone concentrations following treatment with the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist triptorelin and the GnRH receptor blocker degarelix.

Methods: Fifty-eight healthy subjects received single subcutaneous or intramuscular injections of 3.75 mg of triptorelin and 170 prostate cancer patients received multiple subcutaneous doses of degarelix of between 120 and 320 mg.

Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modelling of GnRH antagonist degarelix: a comparison of the non-linear mixed-effects programs NONMEM and NLME.

In this paper, the two non-linear mixed-effects programs NONMEM and NLME were compared for their use in population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) modelling. We have described the first-order conditional estimation (FOCE) method as implemented in NONMEM and the alternating algorithm in NLME proposed by Lindstrom and Bates. The two programs were tested using clinical PK/PD data of a new gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist degarelix currently being developed for prostate cancer treatment.

Stochastic differential equations in NONMEM: implementation, application, and comparison with ordinary differential equations.

Purpose: The objective of the present analysis was to explore the use of stochastic differential equations (SDEs) in population pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) modeling.

Methods: The intra-individual variability in nonlinear mixed-effects models based on SDEs is decomposed into two types of noise: a measurement and a system noise term. The measurement noise represents uncorrelated error due to, for example, assay error while the system noise accounts for structural misspecifications, approximations of the dynamical model, and true random physiological fluctuations.

Non-linear mixed-effects pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modelling in NLME using differential equations.

The standard software for non-linear mixed-effect analysis of pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) data is NONMEM while the non-linear mixed-effects package NLME is an alternative as long as the models are fairly simple. We present the nlmeODE package which combines the ordinary differential equation (ODE) solver package odesolve and the non-linear mixed effects package NLME thereby enabling the analysis of complicated systems of ODEs by non-linear mixed-effects modelling. The pharmacokinetics of the anti-asthmatic drug theophylline is used to illustrate the applicability of the nlmeODE package for population PK/PD analysis using the available data analysis tools in R for model inspection and validation.

Population pharmacokinetic modeling of a subcutaneous depot for GnRH antagonist degarelix.

Purpose: The objective of this study is to develop a population pharmacokinetic (PK) model that describes the subcutaneous (SC) depot formation of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist degarelix, which is being developed for treatment of prostate cancer, exhibiting dose-volume and dose-concentration dependent absorption.

Methods: The PK analysis is made in NONMEM through joint analysis of data from two phase I clinical studies; an intravenous infusion study and a single SC dose escalation study. The SC absorption is modeled using an approximation to Ficks' second law of diffusion out of a spherical depot.