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Excretion of Penicillin in Man

Abstract

PENICILLIN is rapidly eliminated from the human body, and 40–99 per cent of an injected dose can be recovered from the urine within four hours in normal cases. There is some evidence that the drug is actively secreted by the renal tubules1, 2. In cases of severe azotæmic nephritis, penicillin has been demonstrated in the blood for so long as ten hours after a single injection, although in a normal person after a dose of 25–50,000 units it would have disappeared in three hours.

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References

  1. Rammelkamp, C. H., and Keefer, C. S., J. Clin. Invest., 22, 425 (1943).

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  2. Rammelkamp, C. H., and Bradley, S. E., Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol., 53, 30 (1943).

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  3. Winton, F. R., and Bayliss, L. E., "Human Physiology" (London, 1936).

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  4. Heatley, N. G., Biochem. J., 38, 61 (1944).

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HUMPHREY, J. Excretion of Penicillin in Man. Nature 154, 765 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154765a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154765a0

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