Further notes on Kleiber's approach to allometric scaling

Feedback on 'Kleiber Rules'

First, why not try to find some similar pages?

Nick Holford (University of Auckland) wrote..

I like your page on Kleiber's law very much although I don't agree with your conclusions all together.

I think your critique of West et al. is something of a straw man. Their model predicts what is found experimentally in the basal state and they make a reasonable argument for their theory. Your third argument against them is mainly based on them not predicting things for the non-basal state. This is unfair because they are not trying to do that. Also note that West et al. also successfully predict structural properties (e.g. blood volumes) that do not show dramatic changes in response to physiological demands.

You may also be interested in:

Holford NHG. A size standard for pharmacokinetics. Clin. Pharmacokin. 1996: 30:329-332
Anderson BJ, McKee D, Holford NHG. Size, myths and the clinical pharmacokinetics of analgesia in paediatric patients. Clinical Pharmacokinetics 1997; 33:313-327
Anderson BJ, Woolard G, Holford NHG. A model for size and age changes in the pharmacokinetics of paracetamol in neonates, infants and children. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2000; 50:125-134

We try to make the point that children are small adults and within species scaling of pharmacokinetic parameters seems to work quite well using the 3/4 exponent for clearance and the 1 exponent for volume.

Concerning Lavé's paper:

This paper does not really address the merits of Kleiber's Law. There are many other things that can go wrong in predicting in vivo clearance from in vitro studies and which contribute to the in vitro/in vivo lack of correlation.
Date of First Publication: 2000/10/28 Date of Last Update: 2006/10/24 Web page author: Click here