[Pharmacokinetics: a contribution in clinical geriatric pharmacology?]

Clinical pharmacology in elderly patients and its therapeutic implications come up against the difficulty to consider independently the factor age from the other factors, influencing the kinetics in this population. The knowledge of pharmacokinetics give essential informations for the development of new pharmaceutical forms, adjustment of dosage regimen and recommendations for drug intake in order to minimize the variations in bioavailability and to improve compliance. In regard of results, obtained in such studies, individualized treatment in function of age could possibly be considered. These different aspects are illustrated by recent studies on dihydroergotoxine, a geriatric drug for which improvements in therapy, based on new kinetic informations and the development of new galenical forms, can be expected. Though pharmacokinetics is a useful tool in clinical pharmacology in elderly patients, more informations of the influence of age on the physiology and biochemistry are needed to better explain the difference of response of this population to drug treatment.