Pharmacokinetics of acetylsalicylic acid and its metabolites at low doses: a compartmental modeling.

The pharmacokinetics of acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) and its metabolites salicylic acid (SA) and salicyluric acid (SUA) were studied in 12 healthy young volunteers after oral administration of low (30 and 100 mg) and moderate (400 mg) doses. Plasma and urine were assayed for the above drugs by high-performance liquid chromatographic method. Individual pharmacokinetic parameters were estimated by compartmental modeling (ASA and SA) and by model-independent methods (SUA). ASA parameter values estimated in this study were in agreement with those reported by other authors after administration of higher doses, which confirms the linearity of ASA pharmacokinetics in a broad dose range. On the contrary, both metabolic and renal elimination routes for SA were found to be saturable. The relative changes in SA renal clearance with the dose were more pronounced than those in metabolic clearance. Particularly, there was no statistically significant difference in SA metabolic clearance between 30 and 100 mg doses, indicating the linear kinetics in this dose range. Further increase in the dose resulted in significant decrease in SA metabolic clearance. At the same time, both SA excretion rate constant and fraction excreted significantly diminished across the entire dose range studied. The dependence of SUA renal clearance upon the dose was shown to be complex, reflecting possible saturability of its excretion.