Contribution to the study of radioisotopic methods in pharmacokinetics. Application to specific determinations of drugs or their metabolites

The aim of this work was to refute one of the major criticisms expressed on the used of labelled molecules, that they give an overall result. Techniques were therefore developed to determine quantitatively and specifically the kinetics of the drug itself or its metabolites. Two methods turning to account the great sensitivity and facility offered by labelled molecules have been adopted: - reverse isotopic dilution and double isotopic dilution, applied to some medicinal molecules. In part one the glipentide labelled molecule was used to measure the unchanged product in rat plasma: the kinetics are established. In part two the plasma fraction curves of unchanged products and their metabolites were studied for two molecules of similar structure: cyclobutane carboxylic acid and propyl-3 cyclobutane carboxylic acid. Finally a radiocompetitive method to determine a sulfamido-benzoic diuretic, based on the interaction with carbonic anhydrase, was investigated. The sensitivity of these radioisotopic methods depends on the specific activity of the labelled molecule. For the glipentide for instance, where the specific activity is very high, as little as 2 ng/ml of plasma can be determined. The specific activities of cyclobutane carboxylic, propyl-3 cyclobutane carboxylic and sulfamido-3 chloro-4 benzoic acids are not high enough for measurements better than 1 μg/ml plasma to be obtained