A four compartment model to study the kinetics of strontium metabolism in man

Many drugs confer upon the body the characteristics of a four compartment model. This paper deals with the estimation of pharmacokinetic parameters of a four compartment model to study the distribution of strontium in the organism. The central compartment (where the introduction of the material takes place) is connected to two other compartments (which represent the organic fluids) and one of them is connected to the fourth compartment (which represents the fraction that can be exchanged in the bone). The elimination from the central compartment is through urine and the elimination from the third compartment is in the form of a non-exchangeable deposit. The method of solution involves an optimization method which provides the global minimum of delta, a single variable function. The model is tested for different sets of data and the results are compared with those obtained by the generalized least square method.