Anaesthetic effects of zolazepam and tiletamine on Chinemys reevesiis and pharmacokinetics of zolazepam and tiletamine

The current study aimed to solve the problems of anaesthesia in clinical veterinary medicine of turtles. According to the results of pre-experiment, we selected the animal medicine recommended clinical anaesthetic drugs Telazol(tiletamine:zolazepam=1:1). We compared the anaesthetic effects of different dosages of Zoletil on Chinemys reevesiis, and the concentrations of zolazepam and tiletamine in plasma were detected by High Performance Liquid Chromatogram (HPLC), and analyzed with software PKsolver 2.0 to research the features of pharmacokinetics. Zoletil at a rate of 25 mg/kg was administered intramuscularly to C. reevesiis.The induction time, anaesthesia time and recovery time were 0.42, 4.33 and 4.14 h respectively. Zoletil on C. reevesiis anaesthesia was better, in line with the requirements of clinical surgery. The concentration-time curves of zolazepam and tiletamine in plasma all were conformed to a two-compartment open model. And the concentration-time equations of zolazepam and tiletamine were C=13.462e^–0.223t+2.127e^–0.055t, C=10.619e^–0.203t+0.279e^–0.047t, respectively. The major pharmacokinetic parameters were as follows: C_max=11.695 μg/mL, T_max=1.060 h and AUC=92.470 μg/(mL·h) in zolazepam; C_max=9.654 μg/mL, T_max=0.482 h and AUC=56.348 μg/(mL·h) in tiletamine. It suggested that blood concentration of zolazepam and tiletamine all reached 8.12 μg/mL and 8.96 μg/mL, respectively, which could cause healthy C. reevesiis into anaesthesia. To maintain anaesthesia, the blood concentrations of zolazepam and tiletamine should not be less than 7.18 μg/mL and 4.73 μg/mL.