Quality of pharmacokinetic research in oncology

The usefulness of pharmacokinetically guided individualisation of drug therapy will depend, among other things, on the quality of the analytical and pharmacokinetic methods used. We surveyed the quality of analytical and pharmacokinetics methodology and reporting in a literature search of the oncology literature from 1987 to 1992, using the Medline database. Thirty articles that examined relationships between normal tissue toxicity and area under the plasma concentration-time curve (AUC) formed the study sample. Analytical procedures were adequately described in 77% of the articles, but details of validation of the assay were seriously deficient in the great majority of articles. Methods for calculation of AUC were also deficient in over half of the articles. The findings suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the quality of pharmacokinetic investigation in oncology, otherwise progress in the use of pharmacokinetically guided individualisation of dosage may be hindered.