What is pharmacokinetics?

Pharmacokinetics is defined as the study of how drugs move through the body over time. This encompasses the processes of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (often abbreviated as ADME) of drugs. Understanding these processes is crucial in determining the onset, intensity, and duration of a drug's effect.

The focus of pharmacokinetics is on the time course of a drug's concentration in various body compartments, how it is absorbed into the bloodstream, how it distributes throughout the body, how it is metabolized (primarily by the liver), and how it is ultimately excreted (mainly by the kidneys). This information helps to predict how the drug will behave in different patient populations and can influence dosing regimens to optimize therapeutic effects while minimizing adverse effects.

While drug interactions, efficacy, and patient responses are important aspects of pharmacology and clinical pharmacotherapy, they belong to different sub-disciplines. Drug interactions are often investigated within the broader framework of pharmacodynamics and clinical pharmacology, and the efficacy of drugs relates more to their effectiveness in treating specific conditions rather than how they move through the body. Therefore, "the study of how drugs move through the body over time" distinctly describes pharmacokinetics.