Butalbital

[AMCHEMIAM1]

Does anyone know how much pure Butalbital is lethal? Not fioricet or fiorinal - no caffeine, acetaminophen, aspirin or codeine

 

[jgm63]

Have you tried your own searches for "LD50", etc ?
If so, what are your findings so far ?

Doing a bit of googling.....

There might be some info in here :

Spoiler: link

Chapter 28. Barbiturates | Poisoning & Drug Overdose, 6e | AccessMedicine | McGraw-Hill Medical

accessmedicine.mhmedical.com

To read it properly it seems you would have to pay.
But then you might pay and find it doesn't have the info you need....

This document discusses various barbiturates :

Spoiler: link

Barbiturate Toxicity - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf

Quote from above : "Fatal cases of ingestion have occurred with doses ranging between 2.0 and 10.0 grams"
However, the context of that quote is perhaps not very well defined, so it may not be easy to determine if the statement applies to Butalbital specifically.

 

[AMCHEMIAM1]

I have tried LD50 searches. They are all incomplete and confusing. For starters they are usually based upon consumption by rats. I don't know how you're supposed to calculate body weight differential between humans and rats. Secondly the "50" refers to a lethal dosage for half the trial recipients and lastly as you stated things are never well defined or use terms I am unfamiliar with and don't understand

butalbital ld50

date: 2.05.2012 Author: rickserpay butalbital ld50...

nicholaswillis3.typepad.com

 

[jgm63]

I have tried LD50 searches. They are all incomplete and confusing. For starters they usually are usually based upon consumption by rats. I don't know how you're supposed to calculate body weight differential between humans and rats. Secondly the "50" refers to a lethal dosage for half the trial recipients and lastly as you stated things are never well defined or use terms i am unfamiliar with and don't understand

Well I suppose the next thing is to do some research on how you convert non human LD50-s into human ones, and see what general guidelines / practices are used for that.... Plus research how people usually get from an LD50 to a "near certain" dose (eg are there other terms, such as LD99, etc ?), eg do they just apply some multiplication factor, etc.

If you find some of those things out, and can summarise in a useful way, then please share with us as I'm sure others would find that useful....

 

[AMCHEMIAM1]

I appreciate the suggestions, but it may be easier if someone knows the comaparative potency of butalbital and pentobarbital. Both are intermediate acting. Toxicicty levels for pentobarbital are known, the rest could be extrapolated.

 

[jgm63]

Perhaps look up the LD50 for pentobarbital, and see how that has been extrapolated to the human lethal dose, then apply the same extrapolation to butalbital.

If you do that, then please share your calculation here....

 

[Heady_Cerebrum]

Amobarbital appears to have the same equivelancy as nembutal does to phenobarbitol. So it would require the same does as nembutal, in theory. I garnered this info from these two sites. I did see other websites putting the conversion at .3 to phenobarbitol as well. I haven't found a website that explicitly states x amount of amobarbital is needed to bring about death.

Family Practice Notebook

FPnotebook.com is a rapid access, point-of-care medical reference for primary care and emergency clinicians. Started in 1995, this collection now contains 6407 interlinked topic pages divided into a tree of 31 specialty books and 722 chapters. Content is updated monthly with systematic...

fpnotebook.com

[Table], Figure 4-6: Other Sedative-Hypnotics and Their Phenobarbital Withdrawal Equivalents - Detoxification and Substance Abuse Treatment - NCBI Bookshelf

 

[a_strange_day]

I appreciate the suggestions, but it may be easier if someone knows the comaparative potency of butalbital and pentobarbital. Both are intermediate acting. Toxicicty levels for pentobarbital are known, the rest could be extrapolated.

Pentobarbital = Short acting / Butalbital = Intermediate acting / Phenobarbital = Long acting
The minimal lethal dose is the same for all barbiturates, but if long acting you have to combine it with Benzodiazepines. I'd recommend reading the chapter about barbiturates in a Guide to a self chosen and humane death.