Can someone please explain a little bit more on how the internation units (i.u.) scale is broke down. For example: my wife needs to take 25,000 iu of Beta Carotene, how much would that be?
2006-07-14 06:38:06 · 2 answers · asked by Chris H 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Medicine
IU stands for International Units and is used for the measurement of drugs and vitamins.
Webster's defines IU as: a quantity of a biologic (such as a vitamin) that produces a particular biological effect agreed upon as an international standard
What this means is that IU is dependent on the potency of the substance, and each substance would have a different IU to milligram conversion. For example, 1000 IU of Vitamin C would have a different weight than 1000 IU of Vitamin A
Since each substance would have a different conversion ratio, we cannot put up a conversion for IU to milligrams that covers everything, or even most things. Just too many different substances.
So what can you do?
Your best bet would be to contact your pharmacist. They have all the information anyone could ever want about drugs and vitamins.
You could also contact the manufacturer of the vitamin. Most manufactures will have a web site with contact information so you can email them. Try searching the web using the manufactures name or the name of the vitamin.
2006-07-14 06:53:13 · answer #1 · answered by lobis3 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
only the doc who recommended that dosage can advice your wife how to do that
he must know how many IU are in 1 mg /1cc of that medicine
2006-07-14 08:46:29 · answer #2 · answered by qwq 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋