Time of effect duration and administration interval for sitagliptin in patients with kidney failure

A measure correlating the time course of the effect with the time course of concentrations could be helpful in drug dosing. We propose a new equation with explicit solutions for calculating the effect duration. A specific effect fraction is selected (fr) and the time of fractional effect duration (TED.fr) can be derived as a function of the elimination half-life by combining linear elimination kinetics with sigmoid effect dynamics. This new measure is applied to the example of sitagliptin, whose elimination half-life increases from 10.1 to 28.4 h in patients with kidney failure. Under normal multiple-dose conditions, the 24-h sitagliptin administration interval corresponds to a 0.90 time of fractional effect duration (TED.90). A dose reduction to one-fourth or 25 mg every 24 h is proposed for patients with kidney failure; this results in a TED.90 of 45 h, i.e. 21 h longer than the proposed 24-h administration interval (+88 %). The proportional dosing alternative of 100 mg every 96 h would result in a TED.90 of 64 h, which is 32 h less than the 96-h administration interval (-33 %). With a half dose of 50 mg and a doubled administration interval of 48 h, the TED.90 is 51 h in kidney failure, only 3 h longer than the latter administration interval (+6 %). We conclude that our general equation can be applied to rapidly calculate the specific time of effect duration for the different dose schedules.