Drug treatment effects on disease progression.

Degenerative diseases are characterized by a worsening of disease status over time. The rate of deterioration is determined by the natural rate of progression of the disease and by the effect of drug treatments. A goal of drug treatment is to slow disease progression. Drug treatments can be categorized as symptomatic or protective. Symptomatic treatments do not affect the rate of disease progression whereas protective treatments have the ability to slow disease progression down. Many current methods for describing disease progression have two common drawbacks: a linear relationship between time and disease status is assumed, and within- and between-subject variability is ignored. Disease progress models combined with pharmacokinetic pharmacodynamic models and hierarchical random effects statistical models provide insights into understanding the time course and management of degenerative disease.