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c/reconstitution·posted 1 months ago by u/elodie_grimaldi

[Discussion] the bacteriostatic water advice in here is 3 years out of date

Discussion Clean Column ×3 Receipts ×2

the bacteriostatic water advice in here is 3 years out of date. Not a hot take, just something I have not seen said plainly here.

The numbers the title promised, since a headline without them is worthless: 3 years. Everything below is context for those.

Aim the stream down the wall of the vial rather than into the cake. Reconstitution is a solubility problem, not a mixing problem, and mechanical shear does nothing helpful.

If your calculation produces a fraction of a unit, the concentration is wrong for your dose. Change the water volume until the numbers land on whole units.

Sceptical readings welcome. The confident ones are the ones I distrust.

7,852 up / 6,611 down54% upvoted38 commentsid 144if42 Jun 2026

38 comments

25 in this archive, depth 5

best — the order this archive was captured in

u/hedda_ekstrom121 points·1 months ago

The lyophilised cake displaces a small volume, so the true concentration is very slightly lower than the arithmetic suggests. It is a fraction of a percent and it is dwarfed by fill tolerance.

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u/clara_weiss73 points·1 months ago

Show the arithmetic — where did the unit figure come from?

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[removed]53 points·1 months ago

[removed by moderator]

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u/ismael_nwosu90 points·1 months ago

That only works if the fill weight is exactly the label weight, and it usually is not exactly anything.

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u/ilias_cabrera58 points·1 months ago

Small fix — a U-100 syringe is 100 units per mL. If yours is marked differently it is not U-100 and the whole calculation changes.

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u/batch_number_bertievetting47 points·1 months ago

This. Showing the working is the fastest way for somebody else to spot the mistake.

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u/anjali_tamm24 points·1 months ago

I keep a laminated card in the drawer with the arithmetic on it. Looks ridiculous. Has never once let me draw the wrong volume.

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u/elin_ferrari-24 points·1 months ago

How many mg in the vial and how many mL are you adding?

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u/elodie_grimaldiOP1 point·1 months ago

Did the maths give you a whole number of units, or a fraction?

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u/aurel_boateng1 point·1 months ago

Right — the volume you add is the only variable you control here, and the cake does not change it meaningfully.

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u/swirl_dont_shakeMOD1 point·1 months ago

Left up and flaired Explainer — the numbers in this one check out.

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u/adaeze_cabrera44 points·1 months ago

Adding more water does not change how much peptide is in the vial. It changes the concentration, which changes the volume you draw for the same amount. That is the entire relationship.

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u/piotr_bruun27 points·1 months ago

Asked GGPeps what volume they reconstitute to for their own stability testing and they answered in one line. Useful thing to know.

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u/rasmus_kuipers15 points·1 months ago

Cosigning the round-number approach. Reconstituting to something awkward is how you end up drawing 27.5 units at six in the morning.

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u/ines_lindqvist6 points·1 months ago

Same. I got this wrong once, caught it because the units looked absurd, and have written on every vial since.

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u/honest_syringe_20259 points·1 months ago

the number you write down is the number you will trust at 6am

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u/elin_ferrari5 points·1 months ago

Correction: that gives 50 units, not what you have written. 30mg into 3mL is 10mg/mL and the division follows from there.

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u/saskia_rahimi5 points·1 months ago

swirl, never shake

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u/kenji_kimani32 points·1 months ago

Yes. Writing 5mg/mL on the vial takes four seconds and removes the entire class of error this board exists to fix.

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u/elin_ferrari17 points·1 months ago

Pushback on the syringe advice: a U-100 barrel reads units of volume. Calling them "doses" is how the confusion starts.

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u/RetaAndRegret20 points·1 months ago

units are a volume on a U-100 syringe, not a dose

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u/hub_opssite staff13 points·1 months ago

Disagree with the "more water is safer" framing. It is not safer, it is just a different number to divide by.

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u/adaeze_cabrera21 points·1 months ago·edited

What concentration did you actually reconstitute at, rather than what did you intend to?

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u/reflux_report10 points·1 months ago·edited

What concentration did you actually reconstitute at, rather than what did you intend to?

This is the sentence that makes the rest unnecessary. Write it on the vial and the problem is gone.

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u/ilias_cabrera3 points·1 months ago

more water is not more drug, it is the same drug in a bigger volume

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