Distribution, elimination and natriuretic effect of furosemide in patients with severe arterial hypertension

Abstract

Furosemide 40 mg was injected intravenously in 7 patients with severe hypertension and vascular complications. A two compartment, open model was used to describe the disappearance of the drug from serum. The mean serum clearance (Cls=1.83 ml/min · kg) was significantly reduced compared to the mean Cls-value of a group of normals (2.96 ml/min · kg). A significant correlation was found between Cls and mean blood pressure, as well as between Cls and renal clearance (mean Clr=0.83 ml/min · kg); extrapolation of the regression line yielded a Cls-value of 50 ml/min for Clr=0. The Clr was also significantly negatively correlated with mean blood pressure. Protein binding of furosemide was normal, except in one patient, who had considerable impairment of renal function. Apparently more than 90% of unchanged furosemide passed in urine was excreted by tubular transport. A highly significant negative correlation was found between Cls and the fraction of furosemide excreted as a glucuronide. During the first two hours, significantly less sodium was excreted by the patients than by a comparable group of normal subjects. The correlation between serum concentration of furosemide and the amount excreted of sodium was not significant, but highly significant correlations were found between the amounts of furosemide and sodium excreted by the kidney in 0–30 and 0–60 min. In all the individual patients an approximately linear relationship with wide variation in the slope was found between the cumulative excretion of furosemide and sodium from 0–30 min to 0–60 and to 0–120 min. After 120 min deviations were observed in the curves from 4 of the patients, which indicated that smaller and smaller additional amounts of sodium were excreted with constant additional amounts of furosemide.