Concept:
Pharmacokinetics describes how the body handles a drug over time. When a drug shows "linear" pharmacokinetics, it means that doubling the dose roughly doubles the drug concentration in a predictable, proportional way. This kind of behaviour is tied to a specific type of elimination process.
Step 1: In first-order elimination, a constant fraction (percentage) of the drug is removed per unit time, regardless of how much drug is present. The rate is directly proportional to the drug concentration, which gives the straight-line (linear) relationship between dose and exposure.
Step 2: Zero-order, capacity-limited, and mixed-order processes are all saturable (nonlinear), so the proportional dose–concentration relationship breaks down. Only first-order elimination produces true linear pharmacokinetics.
Answer: Option (2) — A drug showing linear pharmacokinetics in a one-compartment model follows First-order elimination. (2)