Investigation of biotransformation capacity in patients with chronic liver diseases by pharmacokinetic methods: experimental trials.

The drug metabolizing capacity of patients with liver disease varies with the characteristics and the state of the disease. The aim of our studies on patients with various chronic liver diseases was to get information about the rational dosage for these patients. Our method in the first phase was antipyrine kinetics (hydroxylation), in the second phase sulfadimidine kinetics (acetylation) and menthol loading (glucuronidation). The induced state was investigated by D-glucaric acid excretion. Experimental trials: 1) comparison of groups of patients with moderate and severe liver diseases with each other, or with the normal control (two sample t test); 2) comparison of various groups of patients with each other and with the normal control (variance analysis); 3) research of potential correlation between the kinetic and biochemical parameters (correlation analysis); 4) reclassification studies with the use of kinetic and biochemical parameters (discrimination analysis). We discuss the practical advantage of the various experimental trials. The most important conclusion is that the reclassification by discrimination analysis gives important data to the economic planning of experiments.