Urinary excretion of phenobarbitone and its metabolites in chronically treated patients.

The elimination of phenobarbitone (PB) was studied in 14 chronically treated epileptic patients under steady state conditions. PB, [S]-PB-N-glucoside ([S]-PB-N-G) and p-hydroxy-PB (p-OH-PB) were assayed in urine by a HPLC method. Some 57% of the daily dose was recovered in urine, 14% as [S]-PB-N-G, 16% as p-OH-PB (conjugated plus non-conjugated) and 27% as unaltered PB. Thus PB-N-G formation contributed significantly to the elimination of PB during long-term administration of the drug, and there was reason to suspect that some of the PB-N-G formed may have already been degraded to untraced products before excretion from the body.