Abstract #300544

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JSM 2003 Abstract #300544
Activity Number: 211
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Tuesday, August 5, 2003 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Sponsor: Biopharmaceutical Section
Abstract - #300544
Title: The Distribution of Half-Life and Its Median
Author(s): Li-Wen Xi*+
Companies: Merck & Co., Inc.
Address: BL 3-2, West Point, PA, 19486-0004,
Keywords: half-life ; harmonic mean ; jackknife standard deviation ; central tendency ; median
Abstract:

The main goal of many studies in clinical pharmacology is to describe the pharmacokinetic (PK) activity of a given compound. This PK activity for an individual is then evaluated through a series of summary pharmacokinetic parameters. Half-life is one of the important pharmacokinetic parameters in clinical pharmacology studies. The statistical aspects of half-life are often overlooked. A common practice is to provide the harmonic mean of half-life along with a jackknife standard deviation. Often times, questions arise addressing what statistical parameters the harmonic mean is estimating and what statistical parameter should be provided to describe the central tendency of half-life. These questions are certainly tied to the distribution of half-life. In this paper the distribution of half-life was studied and the median was proposed to use as a sensible statistical parameter to describe the central tendency of half-life.

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