Binding of diazepam, salicylic acid and digitoxin to albumin isolated from fetal and adult serum.

Albumin was isolated from pooled fetal serum obtained at normal delivery at term and from pooled adult plasma. Albumin isolation was carried out by means of PEG precipitation followed by ion exchange chromatography on DEAE-Sephadex A 50 and then on SP-Sephadex C 50. The binding of diazepam (1 microM), salicylic acid (2 mM) and digitoxin (6 nM) to albumin (40 g/l) was measured by equilibrium dialysis at 37 degrees C. The unbound fraction (mean +/- SD) for fetal and adult albumin of diazepam was 1.86 +/- 0.24 and 1.82 +/- 0.15% (NS), that of digitoxin was 3.18 +/- 0.27 and 3.36 +/- 0.04% (NS) and that of salicylic acid was 11.65 +/- 0.99 and 9.47 +/- 0.75% (p less than 0.05), respectively. With both fetal and adult albumin, a single class of binding sites was observed for diazepam and digitoxin, whereas two classes of binding sites were observed for salicylic acid. The number of binding sites (n, moles of drug per mole of albumin) for fetal and adult albumin was 0.83 and 1.02 for diazepam and 0.014 and 0.018 for digitoxin, respectively. For salicylic acid, n was 1.45 (fetal albumin) and 1.55 (adult albumin) for the higher affinity site, and 3.06 (fetal albumin) and 3.27 (adult albumin) for the lower affinity site. The association constant (Ka, M-1) for diazepam was 1.36 x 10(5) (fetal albumin) and 1.00 x 10(5) (adult albumin) and that for digitoxin was 4.12 x 10(6) (fetal albumin) and 2.7 x 10(6) (adult albumin). For salicylic acid, Ka was 38.4 x 10(3) (fetal albumin) and 35.8 x 10(3) (adult albumin) for the higher affinity site, and 2.7 x 10(3) (fetal albumin) and 4.3 x 10(3) (adult albumin) for the lower affinity site. This work shows that fetal and adult albumin have similar binding properties and corroborates our previous findings with furosemide.