Comparative pharmacokinetic profiling of different polymyxin B components

Abstract

Polymyxin B is increasingly used as a treatment of last resort for multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections. Despite being available as a mixture of several structurally related analogues, the properties are commonly reported as an aggregate of the individual components. We compared the pharmacokinetics of individual polymyxin B components in an animal model and in humans. There were no considerable differences observed in the pharmacokinetics among major components of polymyxin B. Combining different components for pharmacokinetic analysis appeared reasonable.