BLOOD DISTRIBUTION OF TENOXICAM IN HUMANS: A PARTICULAR HSA DRUG INTERACTION

Abstract

Blood binding of tenoxicam was studied in vitro by equilibrium dialysis. Isolated human plasma proteins and blood cells were checked, and the distribution of the bound form was then calculated. The results showed that tenoxicam is mainly bound to HSA and that binding percentages are not different when measured in plasma (98.4%) and in an HSA solution at physiological concentration (704 .mu.M, 98.15%). In these conditions, within the range of 1-150 .mu.M, the tenoxicam binding percentage remained constant, evidence of a nonsaturable process. When a lower HSA concentration (10 .mu.M) was used, the binding parameters of the tenoxicam interaction were calculated by using the same equilibrium dialysis data, by 3 methods of analysis- a stoichiometric method and site-oriented methods, fixing or not the number of HSA binding sites (n) as integer values. The best fit was observed with the first method, suggesting that two main interactions occurred. The site-oriented method gave lesser fits, the better being observed when n was not fixed. Its value, 1.77, suggest the possibility of two binding sites, one of them not performed. The effects of known markers of site I, warfarin and apazone, of site II, diazepam and ibuprofen and of palmitic acid showed that tenoxicam is bound simultaneously to both sites I and II. The binding capacity of site I for tenoxicam is enhanced by diazepam: at this compound alone is bound to site II, this result suggests that the two HSA bindng sites are not independent.