Medicine
Volume 36, Issue 7 , Pages 350-354, July 2008

Pharmacokinetics for the prescriber

Howard L McLeod PharmD is the Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy and Medicine and Director of the Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy at the University of North Carolina, USA. He trained in Seattle, Philadelphia, Memphis, and Glasgow, UK. His research interests include the clinical pharmacology of anticancer drugs, the molecular basis of polymorphic drug metabolism, and the evaluation of cellular targets for chemotherapy within human tumours. Competing interests: none declared

Abstract 

Pharmacokinetics is a tool for describing the movement of drugs through the body over time, and deals with the processes of absorption from the site of administration, distribution throughout the body, metabolism or conjugation of the drug, and elimination from the body. Pharmacokinetics can be thought of as what the patient does to the drug (whereas pharmacodynamics is what the drug does to the patient). This article describes how understanding pharmacokinetics can help the clinician, and outlines the basic principles.

Keywords: drug metabolism, elimination, excretion, half-life, pharmacokinetics

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PII: S1357-3039(08)00112-6

doi:10.1016/j.mpmed.2008.04.003

Medicine
Volume 36, Issue 7 , Pages 350-354, July 2008

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