Computerized evaluation of mean residence times in multicompartmental linear system and pharmacokinetics

Abstract

Deriving mean residence times (MRTs) is an important task both in pharmacokinetics and in multicompartmental linear systems. Taking as starting point the analysis of MRTs in open or closed (Garcia-Meseguer et al., Bull Math Biol 2003, 65, 279) multicompartmental linear systems, we implement a versatile software, using the Visual Basic 6.0 language for MS-Windows, that is easy to use and with a user-friendly format for the input of data and the output of results. For any multicompartmental linear system of up to 512 compartments, whether closed or open, with traps or without traps and with zero input in one or more of the compartments, this software allows the user to obtain the symbolic expressions, in the most simplified form, and/or the numerical values of the MRTs in any of its compartments, in the entire system or in a part of the system. As far as we known from the literature, such a software has not been implemented before. The advantage of the present software is that it reduces on the work time needed and minimizes the human errors that are frequent in compartmental systems even those that are relatively staightforward. The software bioCelTer, along with instructions, can be downloaded from http://oretano.iele-ab.uclm.es/~fgarcia/bioCelTer/.

Linear compartmental systems: II—A software to obtain the symbolic kinetic equations

“…As possible improvements to the RM-w2011 software in the near future, new features, such as those described below, could be added: (1) incorporation of the approximation of the rapid equilibrium of the reversible steps to directly generate the corresponding equations; (2) inclusion of the possibility of providing numerical values to the fractional transfer coefficients to give a numerical expression for the instantaneous quantities of matter in the system compartments involved; (3) addition to the same software the possibility of obtaining the kinetic mean parameters, which are time-independent, such as mean residence time (MRT), departure time, occupation, turnover and half-life, as recently carried out by Villalba et al [6] independently of MRTs; (4) development of a combined environment that allows, for the system under study, both the analytical and numerical solutions corresponding to the integration of the differential equation system to be obtained by describing their kinetic behavior without having to use different applications: thus, a single environment would virtually cover all researchers' needs in this field.…”