Detoxicating Properties of Polyphepan Evaluated in Model Experiments

Abstract

Polyphepan (PP) is among the most effective and widely used detoxicating sorbents [1]. The spectrum of application of this preparation is rather broad, including infectious diseases (dysentery, colibacillosis, salmonelosis, viral hepatitid, etc.), dysbacteriosis, food and alcoholic intoxication, allergy, etc. PP is produced from native lignin, which is a waste product of wood processing. In particular, the annual amount of lignin wastes in Belarus exceeds 100,000 ton [2], which provides an almost inexhaustible source of raw material for the production of pharmacopoeial PP. Lignin (more precisely, the whole class of lignins) is a chemically variable polyfunctional polymer, which cannot be obtained in the form of an individual compound occurring in a certain equilibrium state [3]. This substance is characterized by irregular structure and multivariant intermolecular bonds; moreover, the structure of lignin is still incompletely clear: even different batches of PP prepared from the batch of raw material are not completely identical and even greater differences can be expected for PP samples fabricated from different kinds of wood. However, this by no means implies that PP is not subject to characterization by scientific methods. Polymers have one important common feature: relatively small changes in their structure do not lead to significant or even detectable changes in the properties. For example, alternation of the sequence of substituents or their absence in some regions of mactomolecules may not influence the properties of this polymer compound. From this standpoint, quantitative characteristics determined for an arbitrary batch of PP can be, albeit rather conditionally, assigned to this drug in general. Of course, this characteristic will be valid only in rough approximation and subject to verification.