Randomly labeled C'4-digitoxin was used in a quantitative study of the renal excretion of unchanged digitoxin and its metabolites in three human subjects with cardiac insufficiency. The elimination of approximately 60 to 80 per cent of an administered dose through the kidney suggests that the major route of elimination of digitoxin in cardiac patients is through the urinary route. There is a marked initial excretion of digitoxin during the first two days after administration of the radioactive drug followed by a gradual leveling off of the excretion gradient thereafter. Minute amounts of unchanged digitoxin have been detected in the urine up to the fortieth day after administration of a single dose of the glycoside, while Cl4-labeled compounds were detected up to the seventy-fourth day.U -NTIL RECENTLY, the lack of suitable analytic methods has hindered quantitative studies of the renal excretion of digitalis glycosides. Utilizing only bioassay technics, early investigators'-5 concluded that little if any of the various glycosides studied was excreted in the urine of various species of laboratory animals after oral or parenteral administration. Recently, however, Friedman and co-workers,6-9 employing the sensitive embryonic duck heart method, reported that rats, rabbits and dogs excrete negligible amounts of digitoxin in the

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract