Plasma and urinary levels of adriamycin in man

Abstract Adriamycin, given to 10 cancer patients at the dosage of 0·4 mg/kg intravenously for three following days (this course of therapy was repeated three times at 10-day intervals), was evaluated in plasma and urine according to a simpler and sensitive fluorimetric procedure. By considering plasma disappearance curves of single patients following the first intravenous injection, quite important differences emerged concerning duration of measurable amounts of the drug. Moreover, adriamycin concentrations in plasma appeared to be progressively more sustained and sometimes more lasting following the subsequent drug injections. Urinary excretion of adriamycin turned out to be of a great variability concerning duration of excretion in different patients, duration of measurable excretion in the same patient relative to the successive therapeutic courses and percentage of the total dose administered. Thin-layer chromatography of plasma and urine extracts did not reveal any fluorescent band other than adriamycin itself.