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Background:Diverse tacrolimus population pharmacokinetic models in adult liver transplant recipients have been established to describe the PK characteristics of tacrolimus in the last two decades. However, their extrapolated predictive performance remains unclear.Therefore,in this study,we aimed to evaluate their external predictability and identify their potential influencing factors. Methods:The external predictability of each selected popPK model was evaluated using an independent dataset of 84 patients with 572 trough concentrations prospectively collected from Huashan Hospital. Prediction and simulation based diagnostics and Bayesian forecasting were conducted to evaluate model predictability. Furthermore, the effect of model structure on the predictive performance was investigated.Results:Sixteen published popPK models were assessed. In prediction-based diagnostics,the prediction error within 30% was below 50% in all the published models. The simulation based normalised prediction distribution error test and visual predictive check indicated large discrepancies between the observations and simulations in most of the models. Bayesian forecasting showed improvement in model predictability with two to three prior observations. Additionally, the predictive performance of the nonlinear Michaelis Menten model was superior to that of linear compartment models,indicating the underlying nonlinear kinetics of tacrolimus in liver transplant recipients.Conclusions:The published models performed inadequately in prediction and simulation based diagnostics. Bayesian forecasting may improve the predictive performance of the models. Furthermore, nonlinear kinetics of tacrolimus may be mainly caused by the properties of the drug itself, and incorporating nonlinear kinetics may be considered to improve model predictability.
AIMS A population pharmacokinetic (PK) analysis was performed to: (1) characterise the PK of unbound and total mycophenolic acid (MPA) and its 7-O-mycophenolic acid glucuronide (MPAG) metabolite, and (2) identify the clinically significant covariates that cause variability in the dose-exposure relationship to facilitate dose optimisation. METHODS A total of 740 unbound MPA (uMPA), 741 total MPA (tMPA) and 734 total MPAG (tMPAG) concentration-time data from 58 Chinese kidney transplant patients were analysed using a nonlinear mixed-effect model. The influence of covariates was tested using a stepwise procedure. RESULTS The PK of unbound MPA and MPAG were characterised by a two- and one-compartment model with first-order elimination, respectively. Apparent clearance of uMPA (CLuMPA/F) was estimated to be 852 L/h with a relative standard error (RSE) of 7.1%. The tMPA and uMPA were connected using a linear protein binding model, in which the protein binding rate constant (kB) increased non-linearly with the serum albumin (ALB) concentration. The estimated kB was 53.4 /h (RSE, 2.3%) for patients with ALB of 40 g/L. In addition, model-based simulation showed that changes in ALB substantially affected tMPA but not uMPA exposure. CONCLUSIONS The established model adequately described the population PK characteristics of the uMPA, tMPA, and MPAG. The estimated CLuMPA/F and unbound fraction of MPA (FUMPA) in Chinese kidney transplant recipients were comparable to those published previously in Caucasians. We recommend monitoring uMPA instead of tMPA to optimise mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) dosing for patients with lower ALB levels.
Background Little is known about the population pharmacokinetics (PPK) of tacrolimus (TAC) in pediatric primary nephrotic syndrome (PNS). This study aimed to compare the predictive performance between nonlinear and linear PK models and investigate the significant factors of TAC PK characteristics in pediatric PNS. Methods Data were obtained from 71 pediatric patients with PNS, along with 525 TAC trough concentrations at steady state. The demographic, medical, and treatment details were collected. Genetic polymorphisms were analyzed. The PPK models were developed using nonlinear mixed effects model software. Two modeling strategies, linear compartmental and nonlinear Michaelis Menten (MM) models, were evaluated and compared. Results Body weight, age, daily dose of TAC, co-therapy drugs (including azole antifungal agents and diltiazem), and CYP3A5*3 genotype were important factors in the final linear model (onecompartment model), whereas only body weight, codrugs, and CYP3A5*3 genotype were the important factors in the nonlinear MM model. Apparent clearance and volume of distribution in the final linear model were 7.13 L/h and 142 L, respectively. The maximal dose rate (Vmax) of the nonlinear MM model was 1.92 mg/day and the average concentration at steady state at half-Vmax (Km) was 1.98 ng/mL. The nonlinear model described the data better than the linear model. Dosing regimens were proposed based on the nonlinear PK model.Conclusion Our findings demonstrate that the nonlinear MM model showed better predictive performance than the linear compartmental model, providing reliable support for optimizing TAC dosing and adjustment in children with PNS.
Population pharmacokinetic (PK) modeling methods can be statistically classified as either parametric or nonparametric (NP). Each classification can be divided into maximum likelihood (ML) or Bayesian (B) approaches. In this paper we discuss the nonparametric case using both maximum likelihood and Bayesian approaches. We present two nonparametric methods for estimating the unknown joint population distribution of model parameter values in a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) dataset. The first method is the NP Adaptive Grid (NPAG). The second is the NP Bayesian (NPB) algorithm with a stick-breaking process to construct a Dirichlet prior. Our objective is to compare the performance of these two methods using a simulated PK/PD dataset. Our results showed excellent performance of NPAG and NPB in a realistically simulated PK study. This simulation allowed us to have benchmarks in the form of the true population parameters to compare with the estimates produced by the two methods, while incorporating challenges like unbalanced sample times and sample numbers as well as the ability to include the covariate of patient weight. We conclude that both NPML and NPB can be used in realistic PK/PD population analysis problems. The advantages of one versus the other are discussed in the paper. NPAG and NPB are implemented in R and freely available for download within the Pmetrics package from www.lapk.org.
Detailed modeling and simulation of biochemical systems is complicated by the problem of combinatorial complexity, an explosion in the number of species and reactions due to myriad protein-protein interactions and post-translational modifications. Rule-based modeling overcomes this problem by representing molecules as structured objects and encoding their interactions as pattern-based rules. This greatly simplifies the process of model specification, avoiding the tedious and error prone task of manually enumerating all species and reactions that can potentially exist in a system. From a simulation perspective, rule-based models can be expanded algorithmically into fully-enumerated reaction networks and simulated using a variety of network-based simulation methods, provided that the network is not exceedingly large. Alternatively, rule-based models can be simulated directly using particle-based kinetic Monte Carlo methods. This network-free approach produces exact stochastic trajectories with a computational cost that is independent of network size. However, memory and run time costs increase with the number of particles, limiting the size of system that can be feasibly simulated. Here, we present a hybrid particle/population simulation method that combines the best attributes of both the network-based and network-free approaches. The method takes as input a rule-based model and a user-specified subset of species to treat as population variables rather than as particles. The model is then transformed by a process of partial network expansion into a dynamically equivalent form that can be simulated using a population-adapted network-free simulator. The transformation method has been implemented within the open-source rule-based modeling platform BioNetGen, and resulting hybrid models can be simulated using the particle-based simulator NFsim.
The canine lymphoma blood test detects the levels of two biomarkers, the acute phase proteins (C-Reactive Protein and Haptoglobin). This test can be used for diagnostics, for screening, and for remission monitoring as well. We analyze clinical data, test various machine learning methods and select the best approach to these problems. Three family of methods, decision trees, kNN (including advanced and adaptive kNN) and probability density evaluation with radial basis functions, are used for classification and risk estimation. Several pre-processing approaches were implemented and compared. The best of them are used to create the diagnostic system. For the differential diagnosis the best solution gives the sensitivity and specificity of 83.5% and 77%, respectively (using three input features, CRP, Haptoglobin and standard clinical symptom). For the screening task, the decision tree method provides the best result, with sensitivity and specificity of 81.4% and >99%, respectively (using the same input features). If the clinical symptoms (Lymphadenopathy) are considered as unknown then a decision tree with CRP and Hapt only provides sensitivity 69% and specificity 83.5%. The lymphoma risk evaluation problem is formulated and solved. The best models are selected as the system for computational lymphoma diagnosis and evaluation the risk of lymphoma as well. These methods are implemented into a special web-accessed software and are applied to problem of monitoring dogs with lymphoma after treatment. It detects recurrence of lymphoma up to two months prior to the appearance of clinical signs. The risk map visualisation provides a friendly tool for explanatory data analysis.