Pharmacokinetics-pharmacodynamics of antimicrobial therapy: it's not just for mice anymore.

Since the advent of the modern era of antimicrobial chemotherapy in the 1930s, animal infection models have allowed for the in vivo evaluation of antimicrobial agents for the treatment of experimentally induced infection. Today, animal pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) infection models serve as a cornerstone of the preclinical assessment process for antibacterial agents and dose and dosing interval selection, as decision support for setting in vitro susceptibility breakpoints, and, finally, for the evaluation of the meaning of in vitro resistance. Over the past 15 years, considerable PK-PD data have been derived from infected patients for many classes of antimicrobial agents. These data provide the opportunity to confirm knowledge gained from animal PK-PD infection models.