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c/reconstitution·posted 23 days ago by u/janek_ferrari

someone explain units to me like I have not read a paper in years

Correction Well Actually ×4 Sourced ×3

someone explain units to me like I have not read a paper in years. Searched first, found three threads that contradict each other, hence the post.

Adding more water does not change how much peptide is in the vial. It changes the concentration, which changes the volume you draw for the same amount. That is the entire relationship.

Why "more water" keeps confusing people, including me for a month.

The vial contains a fixed amount of peptide. Water changes nothing about that amount. What it changes is concentration, and concentration is the divisor between the dose you want and the volume you draw.

So doubling the water halves the concentration and doubles the units for the same dose. Nothing is diluted in any sense that matters; you are simply reading a bigger number off the same barrel. Pick the water volume that puts your usual dose on a whole number of units and life gets easier.

The failure modes I have actually seen posted here, in order of frequency.

One: reconstituting at a different volume than intended and not writing it down, so the next draw is based on a remembered concentration. Two: treating units as a dose rather than a volume, which breaks the moment the concentration changes. Three: assuming a syringe is U-100 when it is not.

All three are solved by the same two habits — do the arithmetic before the water goes in, and write the result on the glass. Neither costs anything and between them they cover almost every question this board gets.

Tell me where this is wrong. That is the useful part of posting it.

1,554 up / 111 down93% upvoted52 commentsid 18afm16 Jul 2026

52 comments

19 in this archive, depth 5

best — the order this archive was captured in

u/vito_beaulieu248 points·23 days ago

Bacteriostatic water contains benzyl alcohol as a preservative, which is what makes repeated entry into the same vial reasonable. Plain sterile water has no preservative.

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u/oskar_kaufmann156 points·23 days ago

Same. I got this wrong once, caught it because the units looked absurd, and have written on every vial since.

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u/marisol_frisk-27 points·23 days ago

Are you accounting for the powder volume, or is that where the confusion is?

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u/rina_bergstrom1 point·23 days ago

Agreed — units are volume. Once that lands, the rest of the arithmetic is one division.

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u/marta_weiss115 points·22 days ago

The lyophilised cake displaces a small volume, so the true concentration is very slightly lower than the arithmetic suggests. It is a fraction of a percent and it is dwarfed by fill tolerance.

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u/vito_beaulieu74 points·22 days ago

Correction: that gives 20 units, not what you have written. 5mg into 1mL is 5mg/mL and the division follows from there.

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u/katrin_marchetti111 points·22 days ago

reconstituting at a round concentration makes every later dose easy

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u/cesar_ivaturi87 points·21 days ago

I would not round that figure. At 10mg/mL a rounding error of two units is a real fraction of the intended amount.

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u/tuva_kirchner46 points·21 days ago

Disagree with the "more water is safer" framing. It is not safer, it is just a different number to divide by.

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u/ilias_steiner37 points·21 days ago

label the vial with the date as well as the concentration

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u/ahmed_rasmussen22 points·21 days ago

Disagree with the "more water is safer" framing.

Right, and the arithmetic behind it: 5mg in 1mL is 5mg/mL, so 2.5mg is 50 units.

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u/janek_ferrariOP14 points·21 days ago

aim the stream at the glass wall, not at the cake

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u/anjali_tamm6 points·20 days ago

aim the stream at the glass wall, not at the cake

Adding one thing — put the date on the label too. Concentration plus date and you can never mix two vials up.

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u/janek_ferrariOP28 points·21 days ago

How many mg in the vial and how many mL are you adding?

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u/soren_zamora21 points·20 days ago

The arithmetic in full: concentration is mass over volume, so 5mg into 1mL gives 5mg/mL. A U-100 syringe is graduated at 100 units per millilitre, so 0.5mg is 0.5 divided by 5 millilitres, which is 10 units.

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u/alcohol_aversion56 points·22 days ago

Asked SGN what volume they reconstitute to for their own stability testing and they answered in one line. Useful thing to know.

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u/quarter_dose_queenlow and slow28 points·22 days ago

What is written on the vial right now?

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u/RetaAndRegret215 points·22 days ago

What is written on the vial right now?

Disagreeing with this line only: adding more water is not a safety margin, it is a different divisor.

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u/hub_opssite staff14 points·22 days ago

Small fix — a U-100 syringe is 100 units per mL. If yours is marked differently it is not U-100 and the whole calculation changes.

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About c/reconstitution

The arithmetic and the technique. Bacteriostatic versus sterile water, reconstitution volume as a concentration choice, converting mg/mL into insulin-syringe units, dead space, swirl-not-shake, stopper coring, and how long a reconstituted vial is actually good for. Math errors get corrected fast and politely.

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