Intake and excretion of disodium monomethylarsonate in horses: a speciation study

Capillary electrophoresis coupled to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was used in a speciation study on disodium monomethylarsonate (DS-MMA^V) and its metabolites in horses, to which the drug was administered by intramuscular injection on five consecutive days at a single arsenic dosage of 270 mg day⁻¹. Samples of urine, whole blood, plasma, and mane hair were analyzed before, during, and after drug administration. The data show that blood clearing and urinary excretion of MMA is a fast process following first-order kinetics with biological half-lives of about 38 h and 44 h for urine and plasma, respectively. In the time period of 9 days studied, the only metabolite detected in urine was dimethylarsinic acid (DMA^V), which 4 days after the last drug administration accounted for up to 75% of the total excreted arsenic species. This shows, for the first time, that biomethylation of MMA^V to DMA^V is the principal metabolic pathway of this drug in horses. Although DS-MMA^V was administered only during a short 5-day period, an up to six fold increase of arsenic could be measured in the newly grown mane hair.