PK data from individuals who vomited after drug ingestion
Dear NM-users,
I have a question regarding NONMEM modeling of PK data from individuals
who vomited after drug ingestion. Basically, I have a set of data from
about 150 subjects (about 5 measurements per subject) who orally
ingested alcohol at time = 0 h. However, about 15% of this group
vomited more than 1 h post-dose. Based on NONMEM modeling of PK data
from subjects who did not vomit during the study, the mean elimination
half-life is about 30 min.
May I ask if I should model vomiting incidence (a "yes" or a "no") as a
categorical covariate for analysis of all the data? I have demographic
covariate information at hand. Or, should I introduce a mixture model
during NONMEM modeling? I would expect the vomiting subgroup to display
different values for Vd, Ka etc as compared to the non-vomiting
subgroup.
Thank you very much for your time and kind advice.
Best wishes,
Kok-Yong Seng, PhD
DSO National Laboratories
Republic of Singapore