A new method for multi-compartment pharmacokinetic analysis: The eigenvector decomposition principle

Summary It is well known in pharmacokinetics that exponential changes in blood concentrations of a drug are not related directly to the properties of the compartments that make up the system under study. A mathematical analysis is presented that permits treatment of the exponential components in a manner analogous to that of the hypothetical compartments. A simple treatment of cumulation processes in the central compartment is done to avoid full analysis of the system. For the circumstance when elimination is confined to the central compartment, total accumulation in the system and the exact volume of distribution are calculated from the blood concentration curve after a single i.v. injection. The method reduces complex accumulation calculations to the simplicity of single compartment formulae.