Bolus Dose

A bolus dose represents an instantaneous increase in the amount of a drug in a specific compartment. Physiologically it represents an injection where the drug is assumed to be well distributed within the compartment within a negligible time period.

Note

See the Bolus Dose with no elimination. for Tut Script used to generate results in this section.

The mathematical expression for a bolus at time t_B in compartment Central is:-

s[CENTRAL] = s[CENTRAL] + B(t)

where:-

B(t)=
\Biggl \lbrace
{
    \text{c[AMT]} ,\text{ if } { t = t_B }
    \atop
    0.0, \text{ otherwise }
}

In PoPy, we add a bolus dose to a given compartment (e.g. Central) using the DERIVATIVES section of the script:

d[CENTRAL] = @bolus{amt: c[AMT], lag: m[LAG]} + ...

Because the dose amount is usually fixed by the experiment, it is typically included in the input data and is therefore a column (or covariate) and encoded as such, e.g. c[AMT].

The lag time, however, is usually estimated as a model parameter and would typically be coded as such, e.g. m[LAG]. If lag time is not included in the bolus function, it defaults to zero:

d[CENTRAL] = @bolus{amt: c[AMT], lag: 0.0} + ...

which is exactly the same as

d[CENTRAL] = @bolus{amt: c[AMT]} + ...

See @bolus for some more syntax examples.

The cumulative amount in the compartment (with no elimination) is therefore a step function (Fig. 4):

Cumulative amount following a bolus dose with no elimination

Fig. 4 Cumulative amount following a bolus dose with no elimination

An example of a bolus dose added to a one compartment model with no lag time is:

DERIVATIVES: |
    d[CENTRAL] = @bolus{amt:c[AMT]} - c[CL]*s[CENTRAL]/c[V]