Where did the Poison come from?

Forensic Pharmacokinetics

A few years ago a prominent politician was found to be suffering from chemical poisoning. The poison detected in their blood was not a single compound but a group of related compounds. Each of the compounds has slow linear elimination kinetics that appear to follow one compartment pharmacokinetics. Topical absorption is relatively rapid and complete and since elimination was quite slow calculations can be based on IV bolus equations. The blood sample was carefully assayed and three components were quantitated.

Component Fraction Found in
the Blood Sample
Elimination
half life
A 13.58% 18.6 days
B 69.78% 41.9 days
C 16.64% 18.6 days

The most likely time that the politician was poisoned was 79 days before the blood sample was collected. There were three possible sources of the poison. Solid samples from each of these sources were available. Also, because the synthetic process used to prepare these sample was different they contained different proportions of each marker compound. The samples were carefully assayed to determine the amount of each marker component and the amounts were expressed as a present in the table below.

Component Fraction Found
in Sample 1
Fraction Found
in Sample 2
Fraction Found
in Sample 3
A 38% 31% 31%
B 31% 31% 38%
C 31% 38% 31%

Your objective as the forensic pharmacokineticist in charge is to determine the sample most likely to have poisoned the politician! Estimate the fractions present when the posion was administered


NOTE: Clicking the button above
will prevent you getting credit for this problem

To get credit for this problem print this page, work the problem, and

You will have one chance to submit your answers for this problem [# 391857495]. You can try the homework problem more than once with different data to improve your grade. Your highest score is recorded. After submitting your answers you can use the browser back arrow to get back here and see how the compuer worked the problem.


Graph Paper Resources

Graph Paper in PDF Format. If you have Adobe Reader installed or Preview in Mac OS X clicking on the links below will provide the graph paper indicated.

Some Equations:

Amount at time t

kel from the semi-log slope equation


Last update: Sat 27 Jul 2024 03:10:06 pm
Privacy Statement - 25 May 2018

Material on this website should be used for Educational or Self-Study Purposes Only

iBook and pdf versions of this material and other PK material is available

Copyright © 2002-2024 David Bourne (david@boomer.org)