pharmacodynamic parameters

The expanding class of fluoroquinolone antibiotics comprises numerous agents that differ in pharmacokinetic (PK) characteristics as well as pharmacodynamic (PD) activity. Although gen-erally considered as potent compounds as a class, their individual in vitro activities, as meas-ured by minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) demonstrate considerable variability. Objective pharmacological measures such as Cmax/MIC and AUC24/MIC, also known as area under the inhibitory curve (AUIC), have been shown to predict bacteriological eradication, clin-ical efficacy, emergence of resistant substrains and economic results. These PK/PD measures describe in vivo potency and can provide scientific guidance to clinicians when deciding which agent to use at the bedside of individual patients, and to healthcare administrators when decid-ing the formulary status for individual agents