Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of intravenously administered anesthetic drugs: concepts and lessons for drug development.

The drugs used in the clinical practice of anesthesiology, specifically the intravenously administered compounds that create the hypnotic aspect (unconsciousness) and the analgesic aspect (opiates) of an anesthetic, provide important insights into principles that can be applied to drug development in general. Additionally, research involving these drugs and their therapeutic applications has advanced some of the fundamental principles of pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) modeling. This article reviews several examples of anesthetic drugs used in clinical pharmacology and points out how they provide insights into methods of applying these modeling concepts to modern drug development in general.