A pharmacokinetic study of JOMO-tech in rats.

Abstract

A pharmacokinetic study of 99mTc labelled JOMO-tech in rats (after intravenous administration of a dose of 20 microg/kg body weight) was conducted. JOMO-tech is a heterogeneous extract derived from Nocardia opaca cell walls. An excellent fitting of the three-compartmental disposition model was achieved. The first apparent elimination half-life was very short (t1/2alpha = 0.0572 +/- 0.01383 h) followed by longer second apparent elimination half-life (t1/2beta = 0.817 +/- 0.1922 h), whereas at late post-treatment time the third apparent elimination half-life (t1/2gamma = 21.7 +/- 2.1 h) proved to be long. The peak concentration in the blood extrapolated to t = 0 yielded 32.3 +/- 7.54 ngeq/ml, this being approximately 2-fold the amount of that measured in the 5th post-treatment minute (16.84 +/- 1.447 ngeq/ml). It was determined that the main route of excretion was renal. Up to the 48th post-treatment hour, 30.03 +/- 2.788% of the dose was excreted via the urine, and only 6.71 +/- 0.973% was excreted in the feces by the 7 rats evaluated. The amount of radioactivity detected in selected tissue samples (expressed in ngeq JOMO-tech/g wet tissue) decreased in the sequence liver > kidneys > lungs > blood > plasma. In the time period studied, the highest amount of the dose was found in the liver, whereas up to the 3rd post-treatment day a practically equivalent part of the dose was found in the excreta and in the liver.