3 replies to this topic

[brain]

I'm thinking of dissolving 60 5mg selegiline hcl tabs into 12ml of distilled water, then straining through a coffee filter. This would result, hypothetically, in 300 mg of selegiline hcl in 12ml of water. This = 1 mg per drop, according to the selegiline citrate bottles. The point here is that I can take it sublingually and save a lot of money due to 5x the bioavailability. Opinions on if this would or wouldn't work? Would the selegiline remain stable?

Edited by brain, 18 February 2010 - 03:38 PM.

[chrono]

I'm thinking of dissolving 60 5mg selegiline hcl tabs into 12ml of distilled water, then straining through a coffee filter. This would result, hypothetically, in 300 mg of selegiline hcl in 12ml of water. This = 1 mg per drop, according to the selegiline citrate bottles. The point here is that I can take it sublingually and save a lot of money due to 5x the bioavailability. Opinions on if this would or wouldn't work? Would the selegiline remain stable?

Does selegiline hcl absorb sublingually? There might be a reason they use the citrate for this.

It varies slightly, but most droppers are about 0.05mL/drop...so you'd need to do 15mL to get 1mg/drop, or 240mg in 12mL. Remember that the hcl and the citrate have different atomic weights (too tired to look this up right now, to see if the math checks). You could do a test run with something that measures 1-2mL accurately, and see how many drops it takes.

Wet the coffee filter first, otherwise it will soak up some water and with it some selegiline. Use unbleached filters.

[Animal]

I personally don't think it will work, simply because you can't know with any degree of accuracy what the potency of the resulting solution will be. Sure you can assume that the coffee filter will remove the fillers, lactose and any other inert constituents, but this is not a sure thing. Plus there is no way to be sure of the concentration of actives that will pass through the filter, and it certainly won't be anywhere near 100%.

Selegiline Hydrochloride is soluble in water, but it's miscibility at room temperature may preclude a saturation concentration of 25 mg/ml without some opposing phase separation, especially when the solution is left inert for extended periods.

These kinds of variable are extremely important when dealing with a compound that has clinical activity at such low volumes, especially if you're relying on drastically increased bioavailability as a means to minimise dosage.

I would recommend you just take the tablets as intended, but combine it with some sort of fatty acid source. Since it's an acetylenic derivative of phenylethylamine, it is lipophillic, so this should increase bioavailibility by as much as 300%.

[chrono]

I agree, it doesn't really seem worth it. To do it correctly you'd have to powderize the tablets very finely, which would necessitate aggressive filtering. And to get out the most actives, you'd probably want to do several extractions, with filter washes. It would, as animal pointed out, be extremely difficult to know just how much selegiline you had in each tiny drop, and it's one of those drugs for which it's important to know the dose.

Besides, the price of selegiline tablets is so low.