Prediction of glucuronidated drug clearance in pediatrics (≤5 years): An allometric approach

The Blind Spot of Pharmacology: A Scoping Review of Drug Metabolism in Prematurely Born Children

The limit for possible survival after extremely preterm birth has steadily improved and consequently, more premature neonates with increasingly lower gestational age at birth now require care. This specialized care often include intensive pharmacological treatment, yet there is currently insufficient knowledge of gestational age dependent differences in drug metabolism. This potentially puts the preterm neonates at risk of receiving sub-optimal drug doses with a subsequent increased risk of adverse or insufficient drug effects, and often pediatricians are forced to prescribe medication as off-label or even off-science. In this review, we present some of the particularities of drug disposition and metabolism in preterm neonates. We highlight the challenges in pharmacometrics studies on hepatic drug metabolism in preterm and particularly extremely (less than 28 weeks of gestation) preterm neonates by conducting a scoping review of published literature. We find that >40% of included studies failed to report a clear distinction between term and preterm children in the presentation of results making direct interpretation for preterm neonates difficult. We present summarized findings of pharmacokinetic studies done on the major CYP sub-systems, but formal meta analyses were not possible due the overall heterogeneous approaches to measuring the phase I and II pathways metabolism in preterm neonates, often with use of opportunistic sampling. We find this to be a testament to the practical and ethical challenges in measuring pharmacokinetic activity in preterm neonates. The future calls for optimized designs in pharmacometrics studies, including PK/PD modeling-methods and other sample reducing techniques. Future studies should also preferably be a collaboration between neonatologists and clinical pharmacologists.

Prediction of Clearance, Volume of distribution, and Half-life of Drugs in Extremely Low to Low Birth Weight Neonates: An Allometric Approach

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

More than 20 million infants worldwide (15.5 % of all births) are born with low birth weight. Low birth weight is associated with poor growth in childhood and a higher incidence of adult diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. The objective of this study was to evaluate the predictive performance of allometric models to predict clearance, volume of distribution, and half-life in extremely low to low birth weight neonates (<1 to 2.5 kg body weight).

METHODS

Several allometric models were used to predict clearance (4 models), volume of distribution (2 models), and half-life (2 models) in extremely low to low birth weight neonates. From the literature, clearance, volume of distribution, and half-life values for 16 drugs for these neonates were obtained. The predictive performance of these allometric models was evaluated by comparing the predicted values of the aforementioned pharmacokinetic parameters with the observed pharmacokinetic parameters in an individual neonate. For the evaluation of the predictive performance of these allometric models, there were 16 drugs with 36 (n = 279), 34 (n = 261), and 31 (n = 197) weight groups for clearance, volume of distribution, and half-life, respectively.

RESULTS

The prediction error of ≤50 % for mean clearance, volume of distribution, and half-life values were 69, 79, and 58 %, respectively, by proposed allometric models. The prediction error of ≤50 % for mean clearance, volume of distribution, and half-life values by theoretical allometric exponents were 0 % (exponent = 0.75), 71 % (exponent = 1.0), and 0 % (exponent = 0.25), respectively. In this analysis, out of 16 drugs, there were three drugs (ibuprofen, zidovudine, and buprenorphine) which are metabolized by glucuronidation and one drug (furosemide) is renally secreted. The predicted clearances of these four drugs were substantially higher by the proposed allometric methods. It seems that drugs of these physiological characteristics may require different method(s) to improve the prediction of clearance in the neonates.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the proposed allometric methods can predict mean pharmacokinetic parameters of drugs in extremely low to low birth weight neonates with reasonable accuracy and are of practical value during neonatal drug development.