Mass Drug Administration to Control and Eliminate Malaria in Africa: How Do We Best Utilize the Tools at Hand?

Eliminating drugs from the body is a vital process that occurs through excretion or metabolism. Understanding the kinetics of drug elimination is crucial for drug development, dosage determination, and optimizing patient outcomes.
Drug clearance depends on the rate of drug elimination and its plasma concentration. Another important parameter is the half-life of a drug, which is the time required for its concentration to decrease by half. In most cases, drug clearance follows first-order...

Drug elimination involves many complex processes and does not necessarily differentiate between distribution and elimination. It is divided into two primary components: excretion and biotransformation.
Excretion refers to removing a drug from the body, either in its unchanged form or as its metabolites. Nonvolatile and polar drugs are primarily excreted through the kidneys, with other pathways including bile, sweat, saliva, and milk. Volatile drugs such as anesthetic gases are excreted via the...

The liver plays a pivotal role in eliminating drugs and their metabolites, primarily through a process known as biliary excretion. This process involves the hepatocytes, the primary cells in the liver that generate bile. A range of transporters actively expels polar drugs or hydrophilic drug metabolites into the bile, which transports the drugs and metabolites into the small intestine. From here, they are eventually expelled from the body through feces. In some instances, the original drug or a...

Drug elimination refers to removing drugs from the body, either through urine by the kidneys or through bile by the liver. Drug clearance is a pharmacokinetic parameter that measures the efficiency of drug removal from the bloodstream within a specific time frame. It is calculated as the rate at which a drug is eliminated from plasma divided by the plasma concentration of the drug.
Drug clearance is not limited to renal excretion but encompasses all organs involved in drug elimination,...

Choosing the appropriate route of drug administration is significantly influenced by two key factors: the therapeutic objectives and the inherent properties of the drug being used.
Administering drugs via inhalation allows for the direct delivery of gaseous, volatile substances or droplets to different parts of the respiratory tract. One of the advantages of the inhalation route is the rapid absorption of drugs into the circulatory system, which is possible because of the large surface area of...

Medications can be administered through the enteral route using liquids, capsules, or tablets.
Enteral administration involves drug administration via the mouth in two ways: orally or sublingually.
Unlike sublingually drugs, drugs that are taken orally pass through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and get metabolized by the liver. Once metabolized, the drug is absorbed into the systemic circulation, reaching different body parts via the bloodstream. However, while passing through the stomach,...