Contributions of Toxicokinetics to Toxicology of Drugs

Abstract

Toxicology is a discipline which employs a series of tests to predict the toxic effects of drugs in man. This prediction is made by extrapolating data from animal studies and—with a number of notable exceptions—has been relatively useful in developing new drugs. There is still room for considerable improvement, however, in the available methods. In synthesis, the toxic effect of a drug depends on two major components: the concentration present at the target site and the sensitivity of the target site. These are both subject to important changes in relation to a large number of variables including the animal species, strain, age, the environment, and the pathology. This paper concentrates on one of these components, the levels of the drug at the target site; the discipline involved in these studies is known as toxicokinetics and shares various methods with pharmacokinetics.