THE BINDING OF ANTIBIOTICS TO SERUM PROTEINS

Abstract

The published work on the binding of antibiotics to serum proteins is extensive. Nevertheless, data are still incomplete in certain respects. For example, there is little information on the rate at which antibiotics are bound to the proteins and the rate at which this complex breaks down. Similarly, although the binding of antibiotics to serum proteins is known to be essentially reversible it is not certain whether there is any proportion of the drug which is bound irreversibly. On certain aspects, published data are available but are conflicting and some lack of agreement exists on the precise extent of binding of certain antibiotics, particularly of tetracyclines. There is also a general lack of comparative results on the extent of binding for related antibiotics obtained from experiments carried out by the same method.