AUC
Abbreviation with 3 meanings
| Stands for | Area under the curve |
|---|---|
| Meanings | 3 |
| Categories | Medical, Writing & Everyday |
| Also written | a.u.c. |
AUC has three meanings. The most common are Area under the curve (pharmacology) and Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (medical research); it can also stand for Ab urbe condita (from the founding of the city).
Meanings of AUC at a glance
| # | AUC stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Area under the curve | Medical › Pharmacology |
| 2 | Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve | Medical › Medical Research |
| 3 | Ab urbe condita (from the founding of the city) | Writing & Everyday › Latin |
1. Area under the curve
Medical · Pharmacology Abbreviations · also used in technology
Total drug exposure over time, measured as the area under a graph of blood concentration against time. It is used to compare formulations, to assess bioequivalence and, increasingly, to dose drugs such as vancomycin and carboplatin.
Example: Target vancomycin AUC 400-600 mg·h/L; current estimate 520 on two levels.
Carboplatin is dosed with the Calvert formula: dose in mg equals the target AUC multiplied by (GFR + 25). A 2020 consensus guideline from US infectious disease and pharmacy societies recommended AUC-guided vancomycin dosing instead of trough levels to reduce kidney injury. In statistics AUC also measures diagnostic test accuracy (area under the ROC curve).
2. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve
Medical · Medical Research Abbreviations
Summary of a test's or model's ability to discriminate between people with and without a condition, ranging from 0.5 (no better than chance) to 1.0 (perfect discrimination). Values above about 0.8 are often called good and above 0.9 excellent.
Example: The risk model's AUC was 0.82 in the validation cohort.
Also called the C-statistic or concordance statistic for prediction models, it equals the probability that a randomly chosen case scores higher than a randomly chosen non-case. A high AUC says nothing about calibration, whether predicted risks match observed ones. In pharmacokinetics AUC means the area under the drug concentration-time curve, a measure of exposure.
3. Ab urbe condita (from the founding of the city) (a.u.c.)
Writing & Everyday · Latin Abbreviations
Counts years from the legendary founding of Rome, traditionally dated to 753 BC. Modern historians use it when quoting or explaining Roman dating, although the Romans themselves usually named years after their consuls.
Example: Livy titled his history Ab Urbe Condita, and some editions date the year 509 BC as 245 a.u.c.
Also written AUC or expanded as anno urbis conditae, "in the year of the founded city." The 753 BC date was fixed by the scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century BC and is called the Varronian chronology. On that reckoning AD 1 is 754 a.u.c., since there was no year zero. Renaissance and later scholars used the system more than the Romans did.
Related abbreviations
More pharmacology abbreviations
- ADME – Absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion
- ADR – Adverse drug reaction
- AE – Adverse event
- ATC – Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification
- BAN – British Approved Name
- BBW – Black box warning
- BE – Bioequivalence
- Cmax – Maximum concentration
See all 36 pharmacology abbreviations →
More medical research abbreviations
- 510(k) – Premarket notification (FDA section 510(k))
- AHRQ – Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- ARR – Absolute risk reduction
- BTD – Breakthrough therapy designation
- CBER – Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research
- CDER – Center for Drug Evaluation and Research
- CEA – Cost-effectiveness analysis
- CI – Confidence interval
See all 94 medical research abbreviations →
This entry is for general education and is not medical advice. Abbreviation use varies between institutions; always confirm in context.