The modern pharmacist role is to be a specialist in drug therapy that improves patients’ quality of life and provides pharmaceutical care for patients in a variety of healthcare settings. An important role in this process is fulfilled by pharmacokinetics as a main device in Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM). This course is designed to acquaint the student with the fundamental concepts of pharmacokinetics that affect absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination of drugs in the body and it is prerequisite before a course in Clinical Pharmacokinetics.

Course content:

Lectures
• Disposition of drugs within an organism: absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination (ADME)
• Compartmental and non-compartmental analysis
• Determination of fundamental pharmacokinetic parameters: clearance, volume of distribution, half-life
• Drug protein binding
• Bioavailability and first pass clearance
• Non-linear pharmacokinetics. Capacity limited kinetics
• Single and multiple-dose regimens, steady state
• Sources of variability in pharmacokinetics
• Bases of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM)
• Physiological pharmacokinetic models

Practicals
• Compartmental analysis: 1- and 2-compartmental body model
• Determination of volume of distribution, clearance and elimination rate constant after intravenous administration
• Non-compartmental analysis of drugs in plasma and urine
• Non-linear pharmacokinetics.
• Binding with plasma proteins

Expected results: At the end of the course, students will be able to understand the mechanisms of drug absorption, distribution and elimination and how these processes are expressed in mathematical equations. Students should be able to apply pharmacokinetic principles to determine fundamental parameters from concentration-time data after administration of drugs via various routes.

Form of final assessment: Test exam

Primary literature

Burton M.E., Shaw L.M., Schentag J.J., Wiliams W.E Aplied Pharmacokinetics &Pharmacodynamics , Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006.
Shargel L. Wu-Pong S., Yu A.B.C Applied biopharmaceutics & pharmacokinetics , McGraw Hill , 2005.
Rosenbaum S.E. Basic Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics. An Integrated Textbook and Computer Simulations , John Wiley&Sons, Inc., 2011.

Complementary literature

Winter M.E. Basic Clinical Pharmacokinetics , Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2003.
Tozer T.N., Rowland M. Introduction to pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. The Quantitative basis of drug therapy , Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006.