Analysis of drug dissolution data

Drug absorption in the human body depends on the dissolution rate of the drug. Suitable dissolution characteristics are important to ensure that the drug will achieve the desired therapeutic effects. To assess the similarity of dissolution rates of several drug lots, we apply a general growth curve model with different covariance structures. The Box-Cox power transformation and the naive log transformation are applied to a function of the dissolution rate. The predictive sample-reuse, or cross-validation, method is employed in selecting an appropriate model with best predictive accuracy. A testing procedure for examining the similarity among the drug lots is also conducted. A partially Bayesian approach is used for the assessment of dissolution equivalence. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.