pharmaceutics Article Population Pharmacokinetics of Primaquine in the Korean Population Woo-Yul Lee 1,2 , Dong-Woo Chae 1, Choon-Ok Kim 3,* , Sang-Eun Lee 4, Yee-Gyung Kwak 5, Joon-Sup Yeom 6 and Kyung-Soo Park 1,* 1 Department of Pharmacology, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul 03722, Korea;
[email protected] (W.-Y.L.);
[email protected] (D.-W.C.) 2 Brain Korea 21 Plus Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Korea 3 Clinical Trials Center, Severance Hospital, Yonsei University Health System, Seoul 03722, Korea 4 Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Cheongju 28159, Korea;
[email protected] 5 Department of Internal Medicine, Inje University Ilsan Paik Hospital, Goyang 10380, Korea;
[email protected] 6 Department of Internal Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul 03722, Korea;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] (C.-O.K.);
[email protected] (K.-S.P.); Tel.: +82-2-2258-7357 (C.-O.K.); +82-2-2228-1735 (K.-S.P.) Abstract: While primaquine has long been used for malaria treatment, treatment failure is common. This study aims to develop a population pharmacokinetic model of primaquine and its metabolite, carboxyprimaquine, and examine factors influencing pharmacokinetic variability. The data was obtained from a clinical study in 24 Korean subjects randomly assigned to normal and obese groups. The participants received primaquine 15 mg daily for 4 days and blood samples were collected at day 4. Pharmacokinetic modeling was performed with NONMEM and using simulations; the Citation: Lee, W.-Y.; Chae, D.-W.; influences of doses and covariates on drug exposure were examined.