Pharmacokinetics of levamisole in broiler breeder chickens

The pharmacokinetics of levamisole was studied in 20 broiler breeder chickens (chickens that give eggs to breed broilers). A single dose of levamisole (40 mg/kg) was administered orally or intravenously to chickens before the onset of egg production, prelay (age = 22 weeks), and repeated at the peak of egg production (age = 32 weeks). A high-pressure liquid chromatographic with ultraviolet detection method (HPLC-UV) was used for quantification of levamisole in plasma. Using compartmental analysis, levamisole followed a three-compartmental open model with mean values of alpha = 0.1224 and 0.4968, beta = 0.01663 and 0.01813, gamma = 0.002 and 0.002/min at the prelay and at the peak of egg production periods, respectively. The mean values for volume of distribution at steady state (V-ss), determined by compartmental analysis, were significantly different for prelay and peak of egg production (8.358 and 13.581 mL/kg), respectively.