Weak acid

An uncharged drug that can donate a proton and become negatively-charged. Weak acids dissociate incompletely at relatively neutral pH values and thus an equilibrium exists between uncharged and charged drug. AH ⇋ A + H+. If you add H+ to this equilibrium (i.e. lower the pH) then more of the drug will exist as uncharged AH. The pH at which the drug is 50% charged is the drug’s pKa. So as you lower the pH away from the pKa of a weak acid, the proportion of uncharged drug increases from 50% and moves towards 100%.

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An ABC of PK/PD Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Andrew Holt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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