A probabilistic approach for modelling the joint action of drugs.
Venkatesan, P.; Somasundaram, P.R.
Biomedicine; 1989; 9; 13-18.
An understanding of the joint action of drugs is becoming increasingly important in a variety of scientific disciplines, ranging from pharmacology and toxicology on the one hand to industrial hygiene and environmental protection on the other. The action of even a single drug upon a biological organism involves a complex sequence of processes and if more than one drug is present, the situation is further complicated. The role of mathematical models in this context is now widely recognised.
The mathematical model is only a simplification of the real situation. The true mechanism is generally rather involved when all its details are taken into account and it is very difficult to understand. However, efforts can be made to evolve a working model that is not unrealistic for practical purposes. The first attempt generally leads to a simplistic model, which can be improved later as we learn more and more about the underlying mechanism, through further experimentation, and also from these preliminary attempts of modelling.
In this paper a general frame-work is considered for the representation of the action of drugs, when applied alone, or in combination with other drugs. However we restrict to mixture of two drugs and this frame work can be applied to construct a system of models for the action of mixtures of drugs.
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