Kinetics of the intestinal uptake of zinc acexamate in normal and zinc-depleted rats.

Abstract The uptake of zinc as acexamic acid salt in the small intestine of the anaesthetized rat was shown to be a two-phase process in normal animals. The first phase is rapid mucosal binding which satisfies the Freundlich isotherm equation and which involves about 30 per cent of the initially perfused zinc. The second phase was characterized as an apparent absorption step which obeys Michaelis-Menten and first-order combined kinetics, with the following parameters: Vm = 6.51 mg h−1; Km = 2.96 mg; ka = 0.306 h−1. In largely non-saturated conditions, an apparent global rate constant of about 2.50 h−1 was calculated. No significant interference due to endogenous zinc excretion into the smal…