Morphine 6-glucuronide, but not morphine 3-glucuronide, is a highly potent opiate receptor agonist. In fact, there is converging evidence that much of the analgesic effect occurring after morphine treatment in humans is due to this metabolite rather than to the parent drug. Yet glucuronides as a rule are considered as highly polar metabolites unable to cross the blood-brain barrier and rapidly excreted by the urinary and/or biliary routes. Here, we report that morphine 6-glucuronide, and to a lesser extent morphine 3-glucuronide, are far more lipophilic than predicted, and in fact not much less lipophilic than morphine itself. Force-field and quantum mechanical calculations indicate that the two glucuronides can exist in conformational equilibrium between extended and folded forms. The extended conformers, because they efficiently expose their polar groups, must be highly hydrophilic forms predominating in polar media such as water; in contrast, the folded conformers mask part of their polar groups, thus being more lipophilic and likely to predominate in media of low polarity such as biological membranes.

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In the present study, it is confirmed that the deuteration ofC-H groups is accompanied by a small but genuine decrease in lipophilicity. The lipophilicity of deuterated isotopomers of caffeine was measured by reversed-phase HPLC. Overall, lipophilicity was shown to decrease when going from unlabelled caffeine to the three isomeric trideuterated caffeines, then to the three isomeric hexadeuterated caffeines, and finally to nonadeuterated caffeine. In addition, position-specific effects were also proven. E.g. (7-methy[-'H3)caffeine experienced a smaller isotope effect than its two positional isomers. Both a cavity factor (decreased volume of deuterated isotopomers) and intramolecular electronic effects are postulated to operate.

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