Choice of student's t- or Wilcoxon-based confidence intervals for assessment of average bioequivalence

An open question in the analysis of average bioequivalence is whether the nonparametric (Wilcoxon) or parametric (t) approaches to two one-sided tests is preferable. Previous work has made particular distributional assumptions as to the distribution of AUC and C(max). Instead, we simulate data according to a pharmacokinetic model for an immediate-release formulation. We find that both approaches have estimated level consistent with the nominal 5%. The only concern is a possible anticonservativeness of the parametric approach for C(max). Further, the nonparametric approach is consistently less powerful than the parametric for the cases studied.