Population pharmacokinetics can be described as the study of variabilities in plasma drug concentrations between individuals when standard dosage regimens are given with in a target population. It is concerned with measuring these variabilities within the population and to account for the patient variables includes age, sex, weight or disease state. The determination of inter and intra subject variability regarding variance components in observed drug concentration is the principle aim of population pharmacokinetics. For the optimization of treatment inter-individual variability with respect to subject-specific covariates should also be considered. Opportunistic samples were collected from the subjects taking drug of interest and makes associations between patient characteristics and differences in pharmacokinetics can then be used to individualize drug therapy.
