Dose proportionality and population characteristics of oral fadrozole hydrochloride, an aromatase inhibitor, in postmenopausal women

The dose proportionality of the pharmacokinetics of fadrozole was investigated in 18 healthy postmenopausal women. Fadrozole hydrochloride was administered as 0.3-, 1.0-, and 2.0-mg oral doses continuously every 12 hr for 5 days each in a Latin square design. At steady state, the dose-normalized pharmacokinetic parameters AUC and Cmax were found to be independent of the dose. In addition, no statistically significant differences in tmax were detected. It was concluded that the pharmacokinetics of fadrozole were dose proportional in the projected therapeutic dose range. The relationship between oral clearance and the demographic factors, age, weight, and height, was assessed. Oral clearance was related to total body weight but not age or height. Prospective estimates of the population components of variance showed that intersubject variance accounted for 91.7% of the total random variance. Weight variance accounted for 36.1% of the intersubject variance.