Plasma and salivary caffeine concentrations were measured by gas-liquid chromatography in 6 healthy caffeine-free volunteers following oral administration of 50, 300, 500 and 750 mg caffeine. Caffeine was also given to a single subject intravenously in doses of 300, 500 and 750 mg. Caffeine was rapidly absorbed and was completely available at all doses. The apparent first-order elimination rate constant decreased linearly with dose and was 0.163 +/- 0.081 h-1 for 50 mg and 0.098 +/- 0.027 h-1 for 750 mg. The total body clearance was unaffected by dose and was 0.98 +/- 0.38 ml/min/kg. There was a trend towards increasing apparent volume of distribution with increasing dose. A linear relationship existed between the area under the plasma concentration, time curve and dose and dose-normalised plasma concentration, time plots were superimposable. These findings suggest that caffeine obeys linear pharmacokinetics over the dose range investigated. Despite significant inter-individual differences in pharmacokinetic parameters there was good reproducibility within 5 subjects given 300 mg caffeine orally on 3 occasions. Salivary caffeine levels probably reflect the unbound plasma caffeine concentration and can be used to estimate the pharmacokinetic parameters of the drug. Overall the saliva/plasma concentration ratio was 0.74 +/- 0.08 but within subjects some time-dependence of the ratio was found with higher ratios initially (even after intravenous administration) and lower ratios at longer time intervals after the dose. Urinary elimination of caffeine was low and independent of dose: 1.83% of the dose was eliminated unchanged.

ORG 10172 is a heparinoid with mean molecular weight 6500 daltons. Intravenous bolus injections of ORG 10172 were compared with placebo and heparin injections in 91 separate studies in 83 healthy male subjects. 6400 units ORG 10172 produced a mean maximum change of 14.7 s in kaolin cephalin time (c.f. greater than 120 s for 5000 units heparin). Changes in prothrombin time were minimal (1.6 s for 6400 units ORG 10172 and 4.5 s after 5000 units heparin). A dose‐related increase in bleeding time occurred after ORG 10172 and at high doses (greater than 3200 units) some secondary bleeding, which was never serious, occurred at between 1 and 4 h after incision. A dose‐dependent reduction in ex vivo platelet adhesiveness was found at 10 min after ORG 10172 injection. ORG 10172 promoted a much smaller release of lipoprotein lipase as compared with heparin. The effect of ORG 10172 on plasma factor Xa activity (one measure of its action) was described by a biexponential decay with a mean distribution half‐life of 2.34 (s.e. mean 0.16) h and mean disposition half‐life of 17.6 (s.e. mean 1.1) h. It thus has a much longer duration of effect than heparin. There was a linear relationship of plasma anti‐Xa response to increasing dose although there was some variability only partly explained by differences in body weight or surface area. ORG 10172 administration by bolus intravenous injection was well tolerated and there was no evidence of adverse effects on clinical chemistry or haematology tests.

A simple high performance liquid chromatographic assay for the determination of plasma glibenclamide concentrations is described. This resolved glibenclamide from normal plasma constituents. The calibration curve of the assay was linear over the range 10-500 microgram/l and the minimum level of detection was 2 microgram/l. Within-assay coefficients of variation were 11.6% (20 microgram/l); 5.3% (50 microgram/l); 6.8% (100 microgram/l); between-assay coefficients of variation were 8.4% (20 microgram/l); 4.7% (50 microgram/l) and 7.4% (100 microgram/l). The assay was used to study the pharmacokinetics of a 1 mg intravenous dose of glibenclamide in eight normal subjects. The mean half-life was found to be 1.47 +/- 0.42 h (SD) and no evidence for a non-linear beta-phase or slowly equilibrating 'deep' compartment was found although this could not be rigorously excluded. The mean systemic drug clearance was 78 +/- 29 ml X h-1 X kg-1 and the apparent volume of distribution in the beta-phase was 155 +/- 44 ml/kg. The median time of maximum response of plasma immunoreactive insulin was 25 min and the median time of maximum blood glucose response was 53 min. No correlation could be found between the pharmacokinetics of glibenclamide and these responses in fasted normal individuals.

Sultamicillin is an orally absorbed double ester of sulbactam (penicillanic acid sulphone, a semisynthetic inhibitor of the beta-lactamases of many Gram-positive and Gram-negative species) and ampicillin. First-pass hydrolysis of this prodrug liberates equimolar proportions of sulbactam in plasma, saliva and urine is described and was used to determine the absolute bioavailability of sulbactam and ampicillin from sultamicillin in six normal male volunteers who each received a single 750 mg oral dose of sultamicillin or an iv dose of the equivalent amounts of ampicillin (441 mg) and sulbactam (294 mg). Treatments were given in random order with not less than four days intervening. The mean peak plasma concentrations and time to peak of sulbactam and ampicillin following the 750 mg oral half lives, systemic and renal clearances for sulbactam and ampicillin were similar. The bioavailability for both drugs from sultamicillin as estimated from both plasma and urine pharmacokinetics was better than 80%. We conclude that sultamicillin is an extremely efficient prodrug for ampicillin and sulbactam and that the HPLC assay method is accurate, rapid and easier to perform than the differential microbiological assay.

1 A quantitative thin layer chromatographic technique for the estimation of plasma prednisolone levels has been devised with a minimum level of estimation of 10 ng/ml. 2 A comparative study of the absorption of 5 and 10 mg prednisolone from enteric and non‐enteric coated tablets (5 mg) was carried out in healthy subjects. 3 Mean plasma half‐life and peak plasma concentrations obtained from the non‐ enteric coated preparation agree well with previous studies in normal subjects reported by other investigators using competitive protein binding or radioimmunoassay techniques. Intersubject variability in bioavailability was noted. 4 Enteric coating increased the lag time before prednisolone appeared in the blood but did not alter the bioavailability of prednisolone compared to the equivalent dose of the non‐enteric coated tablet.