Observations on the Absorption, Excretion, Diffusion, and Acetylation of Sulfathiazole in Man *

The sulfonamide derivatives differ from compound to compound not only in scope and effectiveness of chemotherapeutic action4 but also in their pharmacological properties."8 It becomes important, therefore, with each new compound introduced, after preliminary studies in animals, to determine the facts concerning these properties in man. In this paper are recorded observations in man on the absorption, excretion, diffusion into body fluids, and acetylation of sulfathiazole,t recently introduced by Fosbinder and Walter8 and Lott and Bergeim,17 and already shown1 2'6' 14, 21 to be chemotherapeutically active in a variety of experimental infections in mice as well as bacteriostatic in vitro.11' 13 14 The studies were made in part on individuals not receiving chemotherapeutic treatment, in part on patients with acute infections, mostly pneumococcal pneumonia, undergoing therapy with sulfathiazole. Previous studies on the pharmacological properties of sulfathiazole in experimental animals by van Dyke, Greep, Rake, and McKee7 indicate that sulfathiazole is more rapidly metabolized and is much less acetylated than is sulfapyridine. The latter observation is supported by experiments in mice reported by Barlow and Homburger.2 Long, Haviland, and Edwards15 likewise have found that sulfathiazole is absorbed more readily and excreted more rapidly in mice than is sulfapyridine and have noted that in man, in comparison with sulfapyridine, definitely less of the sulfathiazole excreted in the urine is in the conjugated form. Reinhold, Flippin, and Schwartz,23 in a study of the pharmacological properties of sulfathiazole in man, found that it was rapidly