Pharmacokinetic study of i.v. infusions of adriamycin

The plasma pharmacokinetics of adriamycin has been studied in 21 cancer patients (31-85 years old) without liver tumours after short (3.00 min) and prolonged (45 min-16 h) i.v. infusions. The area under the plasma concentration-time curve and the maximum plasma concentration compensated for dose variation showed a more than 3-fold individual variation. The pharmacokinetics of adriamycin was linear. There was no pharmacokinetic rational for variation of the dose with the age of the patients. There was good agreement between the measured plasma concentration-time curves for prolonged infusions and curves predicted from pharmacokinetic data from short term infusions.