Colchicine half-life

Allopurinol is well absorbed with a short half-life of 2 to 3 hours. The half-life of oxypurinol approaches 24 hours, allowing allopurinol to be dosed once daily. Oxypurinol is cleared primarily renally and can accumulate in patients with reduced kidney function. Allopurinol should not be started during an acute gout attack because sudden shifts in serum uric acid levels may precipitate or exacerbate gouty arthritis. Rapid shifts in serum uric acid can change the concentration of monosodium urate crystals in synovial fluid, causing more crystals to precipitate. Thus some clinicians advocate a prophylactic dose of colchicine (0.6 mg/day) during initiation of antihyperuricemic therapy. Acute episodes should be treated appropriately before maintenance treatment is started. 

The disappearance of tritiated vindesine from the blood of rats has been reported to be biphasic, with half-life estimates of 15 min (distribution) and 10 hr (elimination) (59) it is likely that the prolonged elimination phase represents a hybrid between the second elimination phase described above for vincristine and the prolonged third phase evident on inspection of log concentration-time plots for vincristine in the rat. Biliary excretion contributes heavily to the elimination of vindesine in the rat. The bioavailability of vindesine in the rat appears to be very poor. The distribution of vincristine to different tissues in the mouse has been correlated with the estimated concentration of tubulin in the tissues (40). Tubulin concentration was measured by the capacity of a tissue to bind colchicine (40) comparable relationships between tissue concentrations of vincristine and colchicine binding capacity were observed for the dog and the monkey, but it should be emphasized that the correlations were based on the assumption that tissue tubulin content is closely similar in the mouse, dog, and monkey. 

Colchicine is absorbed readily after oral administration, reaches peak plasma levels within 2 hours, and is eliminated with a serum half-life of 9 hours. Metabolites are excreted in the intestinal tract and urine. 

The absorption of colchicine is rapid but variable. Peak plasma concentrations occur 0.5 to 2 hours after dosing. In plasma, 50% of colchicine is protein-bound. There is significant enterohepatic circulation. The exact metabolism of colchicine is unknown but seems to involve deacetylation by the liver. Only 10 to 20% is excreted in the urine, although this increases in patients with liver disease. The kidney, liver, and spleen also contain high concentrations of colchicine, but it apparently is largely exclnded from heart skeletal muscle and brain. The plasma half-life of colchicine is approximately 9 hours, but it can be detected in leukocytes and in the urine for at least 9 days after a single intravenous dose. 

The recently developed oxadiazoline A-105972 (5i) displayed reasonable cytotoxic activity towards a panel of human cancer cell lines in vitro [38], but its utility in vivo was limited by a short half-life. Further efforts led to the identification of the indolyloxozoline A-259745 (5k) [38] that demonstrated a better pharmacokinetic profile and three times increased survival of tumour bearing nude mice upon oral dosing. The mechanism of tubulin interference and the enantioselective synthesis of A-289099 (5k, S-enantiomer) have been investigated, confirming the competition with colchicine [39]. After the preclinical development no further investigation has been reported. 

Compare the distribution half-life and therapeutic half-life of colchicine. 

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