Antipyrine interferes with chemical determination of bromide in simultaneous estimation of total body water and extracellular water.

Antipyrine and bromide dilution are frequently used to estimate total body water and extracellular water volumes, respectively. We assessed a potential error with the simultaneous use of these methods. In vitro the bromide concentration of solutions measured by the gold chloride or rosaniline methods decreased linearly with increasing concentrations of antipyrine. With the gold chloride method, the "inhibitory" effect of antipyrine was more pronounced for solutions in plasma than in those in water. With the rosaniline method, the "inhibitory" effect was similar for water and plasma. Antipyrine had no effect on bromide concentration measured by fluorescein or fluorescence excitation methods. We conclude that antipyrine potentially affects the measurement of bromide space by certain colorimetric methods. The mean values of previously published data do not appear to have been affected by the technical problems described in this study, although these problems may account, at least in part, for the large variability of the results.