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Biological half-life (elimination half-life, pharmacological half-life) is the time taken for concentration of a biological substance (such as a medication) to decrease from its maximum concentration (C max) to half of C max in the blood plasma.
Half-life (symbol t ½) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value.The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive.
An effective half-life of the drug will involve a decay constant that represents the sum of the biological and physical decay constants, as in the formula: = + With the decay constant it is possible to calculate the effective half-life using the formula:
But is also equivalent to divided by elimination rate half-life /, = /. Thus, = /. This means, for example, that an increase in total clearance results in a decrease in elimination rate half-life, provided distribution volume is constant.
The doubling time is a characteristic unit (a natural unit of scale) for the exponential growth equation, and its converse for exponential decay is the half-life. As an example, Canada's net population growth was 2.7 percent in the year 2022, dividing 72 by 2.7 gives an approximate doubling time of about 27 years.
Half-life has units of time, and the elimination rate constant has units of 1/time, e.g., per hour or per day. An equation can be used to forecast the concentration of a compound at any future time when the fractional degration rate and steady state concentration are known:
Potassium-40 (40 K) is a radioactive isotope of potassium which has a long half-life of 1.25 billion years. It makes up about 0.012% (120 ppm) of natural potassium.. Potassium-40 undergoes three types of radioactive decay.
The absorption rate constant K a is a value used in pharmacokinetics to describe the rate at which a drug enters into the system. It is expressed in units of time −1. [1] The K a is related to the absorption half-life (t 1/2a) per the following equation: K a = ln(2) / t 1/2a.