What is pharmacokinetics?

Pharmacokinetics is best defined as the branch of pharmacology that focuses on the movement of drugs within the body. This includes the processes of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of drugs, often summarized as ADME. Understanding pharmacokinetics is crucial for determining the appropriate dosage and frequency of medication administration to ensure therapeutic effectiveness while minimizing side effects.

Knowledge of how the body processes a drug helps healthcare professionals predict how long a drug will exert its therapeutic effects, how it might accumulate in the body, and how long it takes to be eliminated. This information is essential for designing treatment regimens and understanding individual variations in drug disposition.

For instance, different persons may metabolize drugs at varying rates, and pharmacokinetic studies help in customizing therapies to accommodate age, weight, health status, and other factors. In contrast, studying drug interactions pertains to how different medicines may affect each other's pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics, but it is a separate concept. Similarly, the science of drug formulation and methods for assessing drug toxicity focus on different aspects of pharmacology that do not specifically address the biological movement and processing of the drug in the body.