Kinetics of combined drug action

For the purpose of obtaining quantitative concentration-effect relationship for combined drugs, rationales of the Hill equation were inferred and five models, i.e., normal distribution (NRD), derivative of R (DRV), vacancy-dependent binding (VDB), equiresponse (EQR), and independence (IND), were proposed to estimate the intensity of the combined drug action. In conclusion, we could not come up to the unique concentration-effect relationship. Among the five models, the EQR, NRD, and VDB models gave almost identical response intensity. Discrimination of these three models is not of great importance. The DRV model gave a characteristic concave isobologram (overadditive), for a given ratio of Hill constants and independent of pharmacologic effect. In contrast, the IND model was able to cope with convex isobolograms (underadditive).