Abstract

P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and CYP3A (cytochrome P450 3A, generally; Cyp3a, rodent enzyme) in the intestine can attenuate absorption of orally administered drugs. While some suggest that P-gp enhances intestinal metabolism by CYP3A/Cyp3a during absorption of a dual substrate, others suggest that P-gp reduces the metabolism in the intestine when substrates are at subsaturating concentrations. Hence, to elucidate the cellular mechanisms that can address these divergent reports, we studied intestinal absorption of the dual substrate loperamide in portal vein-cannulated P-gp–competent and P-gp–deficient mice. These studies showed that at low doses of loperamide, which produced intestinal concentrations near the apparent K_m for oxidative metabolism, the bioavailability across the intestine (F_G) was 6-fold greater in the P-gp–competent mice than in P-gp–deficient mice. The higher F_G of loperamide in the presence of P-gp was attributed to lower loperamide intestinal metabolism. However, at high doses of loperamide, the sparing of first-pass metabolism by P-gp was balanced against the attenuation of absorption by apical efflux, resulting in no net effect on F_G. In vitro studies with intestinal tissue from P-gp–competent and -deficient mice confirmed that P-gp reduced the metabolic rate of loperamide during absorptive flux at concentrations near K_m but had little effect on metabolism at higher (saturating) concentrations. Further, studies in which Cyp3a was chemically inactivated by aminobenzotriazole in P-gp–competent and -deficient mice, showed that P-gp and Cyp3a individually attenuated F_G by 8-fold and 70-fold, respectively. These results confirmed that P-gp effectively protects loperamide at low doses from intestinal first-pass metabolism during intestinal absorption.