Key result
Applying Kirchhoff's laws to pharmacokinetics relies on incorrect translations and analogies instead of first principles.
Why the study?
Recent claims suggest Kirchhoff's circuit and voltage laws apply to pharmacokinetics to model elimination and bioavailability, but these claims may rely on incorrect translations.
The application of Kirchhoff's Laws to pharmacokinetics is theoretically flawed and based on incorrect translations.
Debunks Kirchhoff-based PK models; challenges bioavailability >100% claims and leaves accurate elimination modeling open.
Over the last two years the idea that the principles presented in Kirchhoff's circuit and voltage laws also pertain to pharmacokinetics (1-3). It is claimed that these principles make the elimination in the liver and kidney more straight forward to model and provide a rationale for understanding why sometimes during bioavailability studies one arrives at bioavailability values greater than 100%. In this paper it will be shown that these claims are based on incorrect translations of the Kirchhoff's Laws to pharmacokinetics.
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Svein Øie (2025) conducted an editorial in Pharmacokinetics. Kirchhoff's Laws was evaluated. The proposed application of Kirchhoff's circuit and voltage laws to pharmacokinetics is based on incorrect translations and analogies rather than first principles.
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