model of a drug and its metabolite. However, the accuracy of the development of MF by linearization for multiple responses has not yet been evaluated. Even if the same linearization as in the single response is used, computation can become more complicated for multiple responses. Indeed, some parameters can be included in several responses and the information on those parameters is therefore obtained from each of those response profiles. This is usual in the PKPD context where PD response depends on the PK parameters. Moreover, as noted previously, use of the linearization around the expectation of the random effects appears to be inadequate for joint estimation of multiple response models [6, 7]. The appropriateness of its use in the context of design evaluation is thus also questionable and should be investigated. The objective of this study was therefore to evaluate the first order approximation to compute the Fisher information matrix in NLMEM with multiple responses. To do this, we considered a PKPD simulation example associated with a population design. Then, we compared the predicted standard errors (SE), computed from the approximated expression of MF to those given by the evaluation of MF without linearization obtained by stochastic approximation using the SAEM algorithm of MONOLIX. We also performed another evaluation by comparison of those predicted SE to the empirical ones, obtained by estimation on simulated datasets using three different estimation algorithms: FO and FOCE (with NONMEM); SAEM (with MONOLIX). Based on those simulations, we also compared the performance of those three estimation methods in the same simultaneous analysis of this PKPD model.
In Section 2, we introduce the notations, describe the PKPD example and present the methodology used to evaluate MF and to compare the estimation methods. Section 3 describes the results of the evaluation and the comparison. Discussion of the results is provided in Section 4. The development of MF for multiple responses is given in detail in the Appendix.
inserm-00371363, version 1 - 27 Mar 2009