Making the most of clinical data: Reviewing the role of pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic models of anti-malarial drugs

Abstract

Mechanistic within-host models integrating blood anti-malarial drug concentrations with the parasite-time profile provide a valuable decision tool for determining dosing regimens for anti-malarial treatments, as well as a formative component of population-level drug resistance models. We reviewed published anti-malarial pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic models to identify the challenges for these complex models where parameter estimation from clinical field data is limited. The inclusion of key pharmacodynamic processes in the mechanistic structure adopted varies considerably. These include the life cycle of the parasite within the red blood cell, the action of the anti-malarial on a specific ..