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. 1986 Jun;51(6):1300–1303. doi: 10.1128/aem.51.6.1300-1303.1986

Reduction of digoxin to 20R-dihydrodigoxin by cultures of Eubacterium lentum.

L W Robertson, A Chandrasekaran, R H Reuning, J Hui, B D Rawal
PMCID: PMC239061  PMID: 3729400

Abstract

The anaerobic bacterium Eubacterium lentum, a common constituent of the intestinal microflora, inactivates digoxin by reducing the unsaturated lactone ring. Reduction of the cardiac glycoside by growing cultures of E. lentum ATCC 25559 proceeded in a stereospecific manner, with the 20R-dihydrodigoxin constituting more than 99% of the product formed. This is in contrast to the 3:1 ratio of 20R and 20S epimers formed in the chemical catalytic hydrogenation. Formation of the reduced glycosides proceeded quantitatively when an overall concentration of 10 micrograms/ml was added to the cultures. E. lentum did not hydrolyze the digitoxose sugars from C-3 of the parent glycoside. However, the synthetically prepared sugar-hydrolyzed metabolites (digoxigenin, digoxigenin monodigitoxoside, and digoxigenin bisdigitoxoside) were reduced to the corresponding dihydro metabolites. Repetition of the experiments with a feces sample from a volunteer who was known to be a converter of digoxin to dihydrodigoxin gave results identical to those obtained with pure E. lentum cultures.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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