Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Prediction of brivaracetam effects in children was obtained by scaling an existing adult pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) model for brivaracetam to children, using an existing population PK model for brivaracetam in children. The scaling was supported by estimating the change from adults to children in the concentration-effect relationship parameters for levetiracetam, a compound interacting with the same target protein (synaptic vesicle protein SV2A). METHODS: The existing adult PK/PD model for brivaracetam was applied to a combined adult-pediatric dataset of levetiracetam. This model was then used to predict the effective oral twice-daily dose of brivaracetam in children aged ≥4 to <16 years as adjunctive treatment for focal (partial onset) seizures. The existing model described daily seizure counts using a negative binomial distribution, taking previous-day seizure frequencies into account, and using a mixture model to separate 'placebo-like' and 'responder' subpopulations. The model was adapted to describe aggregated monthly seizure counts for adult patients in the levetiracetam studies: daily seizure counts were only available for children in the levetiracetam studies. RESULTS: The levetiracetam PK/PD model successfully described both the adult and pediatric data using the same drug effect parameters, and using a model structure similar to the existing adult brivaracetam PK/PD model. CONCLUSION: Simulation with the adult brivaracetam PK/PD model in combination with an existing pediatric brivaracetam population PK model allowed characterization of the dose-response curve, suggesting maximum response at brivaracetam 4 mg/kg/day dosing (capped at 200 mg/day, the maximum adult dose) in children aged ≥4 years.