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c/reconstitution·posted 2 years ago by u/liv_nkemelu

why does nobody talk about units

Question Slow Clap ×6

The title is the whole question — why does nobody talk about units — but here is why I am asking.

Started reconstituting everything to a round concentration and the six-in-the-morning error rate went to zero.

The dead space question sent me down a rabbit hole for a week. It is a fraction of a unit and it is the same every draw.

Shook the first vial because nobody told me not to. It was fine, but I have swirled every one since.

If somebody has the same thing measured a different way, post it next to mine and we will see whether they agree.

824 up / 18 down98% upvoted65 commentsid h9i1t78 Feb 2024

65 comments

25 in this archive, depth 6

best — the order this archive was captured in

u/cardio_endpoint_c152 points·2 years ago

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.

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u/viktor_erdogan52 points·2 years 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/RetaAndRegret240 points·2 years ago

Yes. Writing 10mg/mL on the vial takes four seconds and removes the entire class of error this board exists to fix.

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u/niels_roos13 points·2 years 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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[removed]58 points·2 years ago

[removed by moderator]

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u/karim_ilunga36 points·2 years ago

a U-100 syringe reads 100 units to the millilitre, every time

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u/alcohol_aversion116 points·2 years ago

Correction: that gives 40 units, not what you have written. 5mg into 2mL is 2.5mg/mL and the division follows from there.

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u/arto_falk135 points·2 years ago

Reconstituted at 3mL when I meant to use a different volume. Caught it because the units looked wrong on the barrel. Now I write 10mg/mL on the glass before I put the cap back.

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u/priya_weiss172 points·2 years ago

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

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u/liv_nkemeluOP72 points·2 years 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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u/alcohol_aversion69 points·2 years ago·edited

The arithmetic in full: concentration is mass over volume, so 20mg into 3mL gives 6.67mg/mL. A U-100 syringe is graduated at 100 units per millilitre, so 1mg is 1 divided by 6.67 millilitres, which is 15 units.

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u/janek_ferrari101 points·2 years ago

Bacteriostatic or plain sterile water?

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u/kavya_radich79 points·2 years ago

Spent 20 weeks confused about this until somebody drew the table for me. 20mg, 3mL, 6.67mg/mL, 5mg is 75 units. That is the whole thing.

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u/dexa_twice_yearlybody comp38 points·2 years ago

more water is not more drug, it is the same drug in a bigger volume

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u/swirl_dont_shakeMOD17 points·2 years ago·edited

Corrected the concentration in the title, which contradicted the body. Nothing else touched.

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u/liv_nkemeluOP6 points·2 years ago

Correcting myself above: I wrote the concentration the wrong way up. Mass over volume, not volume over mass.

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u/liv_nkemeluOP2 points·2 years ago

Did the maths give you a whole number of units, or a fraction?

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u/ines_ekstrom42 points·2 years ago

do the arithmetic before you reconstitute, not while holding a syringe

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u/dilara_szabo26 points·2 years ago

do the arithmetic before you reconstitute, not while holding a syringe

ines_ekstrom has the units point exactly right. They are a volume on the barrel and nothing else.

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u/honest_syringe_2025-26 points·2 years ago

the number you write down is the number you will trust at 6am

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u/kavya_radich1 point·2 years ago

Research-use-only material is not approved for human use, so treat everything in this thread as arithmetic about solutions rather than instructions for a person.

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u/emil_wojcik1 point·2 years ago

That only works if the fill weight is exactly the label weight, and it usually is not exactly anything.

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u/marta_weiss1 point·2 years ago

Wrote the date on the vial as well as the concentration after losing track of which one was opened first.

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u/saskia_rahimi14 points·2 years ago

That is sterile water, not bacteriostatic. Same appearance, different product, and it matters for a multi-draw vial.

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u/ledger_modmod · vetting9 points·2 years ago

10mg into 2mL is 5mg/mL, and 0.5mg of that is 10 units

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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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