Phenomenological kinetics of pharmacological response

The evaluation and quantitative analysis of the time course of drug response are difficult tasks even in uncomplicated fields of pharmacology. In an attempt to assist the analysis of the pharmacological effect, a procedure is presented which incorporates widely used intuitive-experimental practices of evaluation, and descriptive kinetic functions. The aim is to find a simple function which can approximate the time course of the response curves at different doses. Having estimated the values of parameters for each curve, valuable information can be drawn by examining the dose-parameter relationships. The method is illustrated by one possible evaluation and interpretation of the blood pressure-time curves of a drug.