Population Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of Linagliptin in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Linagliptin is a dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP)-4 inhibitor, used to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Population pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic analyses were performed to characterize the impact of clinically relevant intrinsic/extrinsic factors (covariates) on linagliptin exposure and DPP-4 inhibition in patients with T2DM. METHODS: Linagliptin plasma concentrations and DPP-4 activities were obtained from four studies (two phase 1, two phase 2b). Non-linear mixed-effects modelling techniques were implemented using NONMEM software. The covariates that were studied comprised demographic information and laboratory values, including liver enzyme levels and creatinine clearance, as well as study-related factors such as metformin co-treatment. Covariate effects on parameters describing the pharmacokinetics and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic relationship were investigated using stepwise forward inclusion/backward elimination. RESULTS: The pharmacokinetic analysis included 6,907 measurements of plasma linagliptin concentrations from 462 patients; the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic analysis included 9,674 measurements of plasma DPP-4 activity and linagliptin plasma concentrations from 607 patients. The non-linear pharmacokinetics were described by a target-mediated drug disposition model accounting for the concentration-dependent binding of linagliptin to its target, DPP-4. The difference in exposure between the 5th and 95th percentiles of the covariate distributions and median was <20 % for each single covariate. Likewise, the impact of the covariates on both the half-maximum effect (EC50) and the concentration leading to 80 % DPP-4 inhibition was <20 %. CONCLUSION: These analyses show that the investigated factors do not alter the pharmacokinetics and DPP-4 inhibitory activity of linagliptin to a clinically relevant extent and that dose adjustment is not necessary on the basis of factors including age, sex and weight.