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Evaluation of Diurnal Variation in Fentanyl Clearance
Author(s) -
Gupta Suneel K.,
Southam Mary A.,
Hwang Stephen S.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
the journal of clinical pharmacology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.92
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1552-4604
pISSN - 0091-2700
DOI - 10.1002/j.1552-4604.1995.tb05005.x
Subject(s) - fentanyl , diurnal temperature variation , medicine , variation (astronomy) , anesthesia , circadian rhythm , metabolic clearance rate , pharmacology , pharmacokinetics , atmospheric sciences , physics , astrophysics
Drug disposition kinetics are commonly assumed to be time‐invariant as a first approximation. In a preliminary study, 6 healthy volunteers received a constant intravenous infusion of 50 μg/h for 48 hours; the serum fentanyl concentration at 36 hours was lower than that at 24 hours for all 6 subjects. This suggested possible diurnal variations in fentanyl clearance. In 2 subsequent studies, with healthy volunteers receiving short infusions of fentanyl (n = 9, 150 μg/h for 0.33 hours every 4 hours; n = 12, 150 μg/h for 0.33 hours every hour, respectively), the area under the serum fentanyl concentration curve appeared to be independent of the time of infusion. Thus, there was no evidence to support a large diurnal change in fentanyl clearance. The serum fentanyl concentration‐time profiles, corrected for carryover from previous doses, within each study were superimposable. This suggests that there are no diurnal changes in the distribution kinetics of fentanyl.