TY - JOUR T1 - Metabolism of N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET) by liver microsomes from male and female rats. Simultaneous quantitation of DEET and its metabolites by high performance liquid chromatography. JF - Drug Metabolism and Disposition JO - Drug Metab Dispos SP - 600 LP - 604 VL - 16 IS - 4 AU - J M Yeung AU - W G Taylor Y1 - 1988/07/01 UR - http://dmd.aspetjournals.org/content/16/4/600.abstract N2 - A simple and sensitive HPLC procedure was developed to separate and quantitate N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET) and its in vitro metabolites using a gradient elution, a reversed phase C18 column, and an internal standard. This procedure was applied to examine the metabolism of this insect repellent in liver microsomes from normal (untreated) male and female Wistar rats. At a pH of 8.6 and at a substrate concentration of 200 microM, the microsomal preparations from males degraded DEET faster than did those from females. The half-life of DEET was 10 min and 15 min, respectively. The benzylic methyl hydroxylated metabolite and the N-deethylated metabolite were determined over 2 hr in fortified microsomal suspensions. Rate constants for appearance of the metabolites showed significantly higher values for males than for females. These observations suggests that a sex difference may be present in the metabolism of DEET. ER -