[Pharmacokinetics of meloxicam in healthy Chinese volunteers]

To assess the pharmacokinetic profile of single doses of meloxicam in healthy Chinese volunteers.

The plasma concentrations of meloxicam after an oral dose of 15 mg to twenty healthy male volunteers were analyzed by means of a validated HPLC method. The pharmacokinetic parameters were subjected to Shapiro-Wilk test to determine whether these data were fitted to a normal distribution.

The twenty volunteers can be classified into extensive metabolizers and poor metabolizers according to pharmacokinetic parameters. The main parameters in the two groups obtained were as follows: T 1/2 were 21 +/- 4 and 38 +/- 9 h, AUC0-infinity were 49 +/- 10 and 110 +/- 8 micrograms.h.mL-1, respectively. Even the AUC data in extensive metabolizers were 1.7 times as that reported in White volunteers following the same doses of meloxicam.

There were significant individual differences in the pharmacokinetics of meloxicam in Chinese volunteers, which may be due to the genetic polymorphism of CYP2C9.