[Study of urinary excretion of codeine and morphine after oral ingestion of codeine]

Results of an investigation on the urinary excretion of codeine and morphine after oral ingestion of 1 mg.kg-1 b.w codeine are reported. The investigation run on seven clinically healthy subjects showed: low digestive absorption of codeine (# 20%); rapid biotransformation of codeine into morphine (first urines excreted after absorption); rapid disappearance of codeine from urines (#30 hrs); persistence of morphine alone (#68 hrs); rapid evolution of the codeine/morphine ratio (inversion of the ratio after #18 hrs); total elimination of morphine which can be greater than for codeine; very different half-life periods for codeine and morphine (5.1 and 13.6 hrs); no other codeine metabolites (nor-codeine and nor-morphine); very high individual variations; one subject with low activity of cytochrome P 450 dbl/buFL. Finally, in an epidemiological survey of drug addict behaviors and detection of drug addiction, it seems very difficult, may be even illusory and hazardous, to try and justify morphine found in urines (morphine, heroin, codeine, codethyline, pholcodine...) except in the very legitimate case where the ratio of urine concentrations of codeine and morphine is greater than one.