Virtual Clinical Trials Guided Design of an Age-Appropriate Formulation and Dosing Strategy of Nifedipine for Paediatric Use

Dilawar Khan, Raj Badhan, Daniel J. Kirby, Simon Bryson, Maryam Shah, Afzal Rahman Mohammed

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The rapid onset of action of nifedipine causes a precipitous reduction in blood pressure leading to adverse effects associated with reflex sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activation, including tachycardia and worsening myocardial and cerebrovascular ischemia. As a result, short acting nifedipine preparations are not recommended. However, importantly, there are no modified release preparations of nifedipine authorised for paediatric use, and hence a paucity of clinical studies reporting pharmacokinetics data in paediatrics. Pharmacokinetic parameters may differ significantly between children and adults due to anatomical and physiological differences, often resulting in sub therapeutic and/or toxic plasma concentrations of medication. However, in the field of paediatric pharmacokinetics, the use of pharmacokinetic modelling, particularly physiological-based pharmacokinetics (PBPK), has revolutionised the ability to extrapolate drug pharmacokinetics across age groups, allowing for pragmatic determination of paediatric plasma concentrations to support drug licensing and clinical dosing. In order to pragmatically assess the translation of resultant dissolution profiles to the paediatric populations, virtual clinical trials simulations were conducted. In the context of formulation development, the use of PBPK modelling allowed the determination of optimised formulations that achieved plasma concentrations within the target therapeutic window throughout the dosing strategy. A 5 mg sustained release mini-tablet was successfully developed with the duration of release extending over 24 h and an informed optimised dosing strategy of 450 µg/kg twice daily. The resulting formulation provides flexible dosing opportunities, improves patient adherence by reducing frequent administration burden and enhances patient safety profiles by maintaining efficacious levels of consistent drug plasma levels over a sustained period of time.
Original languageEnglish
Article number556
Number of pages19
JournalPharmaceutics
Volume15
Issue number2
Early online date7 Feb 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Feb 2023

Bibliographical note

Copyright © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Funding: This research was funded by Aston University and Proveca Ltd., No. 1 Spinningfields, Quay Street, Manchester, M3 3JE, UK.

Keywords

  • PBPK
  • adherence
  • age-appropriate
  • mini-tablets
  • modified release
  • paediatrics
  • pharmacokinetics

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