Total flucloxacillin plasma concentrations poorly reflect unbound concentrations in hospitalized patients with Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia

Aims Flucloxacillin dosing may be guided by measurement of its total plasma concentrations. Flucloxacillin is highly protein bound with fraction unbound in plasma (fu) of around 0.04 in healthy individuals. The utility of measuring unbound flucloxacillin concentrations for patients outside the intensive care unit (ICU) is not established. We aimed to compare flucloxacillin fu in non‐ICU hospitalised patients against healthy volunteers, and to examine the performance of a published model for predicting unbound concentrations, using total flucloxacillin and plasma albumin concentrations. Methods Data from 12 healthy volunteers (248 samples) and 47 hospitalized patients (61 samples) were examined. Plasma flucloxacillin concentrations were measured using a validated liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry method. Flucloxacillin fu for the two groups was compared using a generalized estimating equation model to account for clustered observations. The performance of the single protein binding site prediction model in hospitalized patients was compared with measured unbound concentrations using Bland–Altman plots. Results The median (range) flucloxacillin fu for healthy (median albumin 45 g l–1) and hospitalized individuals (median albumin 30 g l–1) were 0.04 (0.02–0.07) and 0.10 (0.05–0.37), respectively (P