Blood and Plasma Concentrations of Butalbital Following Single Oral Doses in Man*

Abstract

Blood and plasma concentrations of butalbital (from Fiorinal) were determined in a small group of healthy volunteers after single oral doses of 100 mg of butalbital. Butalbital was quantitated by high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection. Typical blood concentrations of butalbital peaked at 2.1 mg/L and declined to 1.5 mg/L at 24 h. The half-lives in blood were between 35 and 87.5 h with a mean of 61 h. Whole blood to plasma ratios were also determined.

Supercritical fluid extraction and negative ion electrospray liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry analysis of phenobarbital, butalbital, pentobarbital and thiopental in human serum

“…4 The development of assays to identify and quantitate barbiturates has been of great value in the clinical and biomedical settings. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) [5][6][7][8][9][10] and the more traditional gas chromatography (GC) 7,[11][12][13][14][15] assays using solid phase and liquidliquid extraction have been reported for analysis of barbiturates in serum, plasma and urine. GC/MS, employing either electron or chemical ionization (EI/CI), has been widely used to analyze drugs of abuse, such as barbiturates.…”

Why Do Migraineurs Abuse Butalbital‐Containing Combination Analgesics?

“…17 Butalbital has a rapid onset of action, duration of action of 3-6 hours, and a plasma half-life ranging from 19 to 88 hours, which may be shorter in drug abusing populations. 18 The pharmacokinetic profile is similar to the historically abused, secorbarbital and pentobarbital. One of the few headache studies showed that BCC provided significantly more relief of emotional tension and anxiety underlying tension headache than either acetaminophen/codeine or placebo.…”

“…It has been demonstrated that barbiturates having rapid onset of effect and shorter half‐lives induce euphoria, reduce anxiety, and have a high abuse potential 17 . Butalbital has a rapid onset of action, duration of action of 3‐6 hours, and a plasma half‐life ranging from 19 to 88 hours, which may be shorter in drug abusing populations 18 . The pharmacokinetic profile is similar to the historically abused, secorbarbital and pentobarbital.…”

Application of atmospheric pressure chemical ionisation mass spectrometry in the analysis of barbiturates by high‐speed analytical countercurrent chromatography

“…Many of these compounds are also unfortunately widely abused due to their sedative‐hypnotic effects. In modern analytical chemistry, many assays have been developed to reliably analyse compounds of this type, for example, gas chromatography (GC),2 HPLC3,4 and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) 5…”

“…Many of these compounds are also unfortunately widely abused due to their sedative-hypnotic effects. In modern analytical chemistry, many assays have been developed to reliably analyse compounds of this type, for example, gas chromatography (GC), 2 HPLC 3,4 and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). 5 Recently, liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) methodologies have become widely used techniques due to the ease of setting up routine methods of analysis, but one technique that is becoming increasingly popular is countercurrent chromatography (CCC), due not least to the development of smaller, HSACCC-scale 6 instruments with the potential to rival HPLC in terms of analysis time and sensitivity.…”