Vehicle / Diluent
Sodium Chloride 0.9%
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Salt water at nine grams of sodium chloride per litre, close enough to the concentration of blood to be called isotonic. It is supplied both unpreserved, for single use, and in preserved multi-dose presentations. As a reconstitution vehicle it is chosen where tonicity matters or where a product's own leaflet specifies it. Ionic strength can change how well a peptide stays in solution, so saline and water are not universally swappable.
Why it matters here
Vehicle is one of the two inputs a beyond-use date is derived from, and plain 0.9% saline carries no preservative, so which presentation was used decides whether a punctured vial has a window measured in hours or in weeks.
What it is not
Normal saline is not normal in the chemical sense, since it is not a one normal solution and the name is historical. And 0.9% saline is not bacteriostatic unless the particular bottle is a preserved one, because the 0.9% refers to salt and says nothing about a preservative.
Also called
- saline
- normal saline
- 0.9% nacl
- sodium chloride
Normal saline is clinical shorthand for the same solution. Plain sodium chloride on a listing nearly always means this 0.9% strength rather than the dry salt.
Compounds carrying this term
None on file yet. This term is in the controlled vocabulary but no compound record currently uses it — which is a statement about our coverage, not about the term.