The excretion of rosaramicin in breast milk.

The excretion of rosaramicin, a macrolide antibiotic, was studied in the breast milk of ten lactating women. Breast milk and serum samples were collected for 48 hours after a single 250-mg oral dose of rosaramicin. Mean serum half-life, apparent volume of distribution, and oral clearance were 4.4 hours, 3.41 L/kg, and 6.34 mL/min/kg, respectively. Mean milk/serum ratio was 0.12 and the total amount of drug recovered over the first ten hours was 6.25 micrograms, approximately 0.0025% of the dose. A positive correlation between breast milk volume and breast milk clearance was found, suggesting that the amount of drug received by a nursing infant will depend on the volume of milk produced by the mother. Drug-induced toxicity from the parent drug is unlikely to occur in nursing infants since the amount of rosaramicin that a nursing infant could ingest is small.