A New Computational Tool May Take the Guesswork Out of Drug Dosing

Age, ethnicity, and many other factors influence how physicians dose their patients. Since 1 treatment will likely not work for everyone with a certain disease that requires a strict regimen, there is much guesswork that goes into dosing.

In a study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a new tool has been developed that will give physicians a personalized guide for dosing each patient.

This tool uses parabolic personalized data (PPD) to gather the patient’s clinical data to predict when the next dose should be given.

PPD uses an algebraic equation to make a map of the patient’s response to the given drug.

In the trial, this tool was used among a group of liver transplant patients. Four received treatment in accordance with the PPD.

The group that received the doses configured by PPD stayed within the target drug dosing range more than the group who received standard dosing by a physician.

Patients who received doses configured by the PPD also had shorter hospital stays than the other group.

Researchers hope that in the future, the PPD tool can be offered to patients with a wider range of diseases, such as cancer and heart disease.