Development of visual predictive checks accounting for multimodal parameter distributions in mixture models

The assumption of interindividual variability being unimodally distributed in nonlinear mixed effects models does not hold when the population under study displays multimodal parameter distributions. Mixture models allow the identification of parameters characteristic to a subpopulation by describing these multimodalities. Visual predictive check (VPC) is a standard simulation based diagnostic tool, but not yet adapted to account for multimodal parameter distributions. Mixture model analysis provides the probability for an individual to belong to a subpopulation (IP(mix)) and the most likely subpopulation for an individual to belong to (MIXEST). Using simulated data examples, two implementation strategies were followed to split the data into subpopulations for the development of mixture model specific VPCs. The first strategy splits the observed and simulated data according to the MIXEST assignment. A shortcoming of the MIXEST-based allocation strategy was a biased allocation towards the dominating subpopulation. This shortcoming was avoided by splitting observed and simulated data according to the IP(mix) assignment. For illustration purpose, the approaches were also applied to an irinotecan mixture model demonstrating 36% lower clearance of irinotecan metabolite (SN-38) in individuals with UGT1A1 homo/heterozygote versus wild-type genotype. VPCs with segregated subpopulations were helpful in identifying model misspecifications which were not evident with standard VPCs. The new tool provides an enhanced power of evaluation of mixture models. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s10928-019-09632-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.