PEPTIDE CORPUS

Route of Administration

Subcutaneous

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Injection into the layer of fat and loose tissue directly beneath the skin, above the muscle. The material forms a small depot in tissue that is not richly supplied with blood, so it is absorbed over minutes to hours rather than immediately. Volumes are small, and they are commonly read off a U-100 insulin syringe in units rather than in millilitres.

Why it matters here

This is the route the reconstitution arithmetic assumes. Mass divided by diluent volume gives concentration, dose divided by concentration gives volume, and volume in mL multiplied by 100 gives units on a U-100 barrel: 5 mg in 2 mL is 2.5 mg/mL, and 0.25 mg comes out at 0.1 mL, which is 10 units.

What it is not

An insulin unit is not an amount of compound. Ten units is a volume mark on the barrel, and what that volume contains depends entirely on how much diluent went into the vial, so two people at 10 units of the same compound are not on the same amount unless they reconstituted identically.

Also called

SC is the standard abbreviation. SubQ, sub-Q and sub q injection are the same route written informally, and they are indexed because that is how people search.

Compounds carrying this term

See also