A primer on International Unit (IU) in pharmacology

KSS Kanhaiya
When you deal with commom units, let's say using the Metric System, you say 1 litre of
water, or 1 litre of milk, or 1 litre of oil. All 3 volumes will be the same even though
their weights will be different.
When we speak of International Units (IU) in Pharmacology, these units are determined
based at the biological activities where 1 IU of two substances may have different weight
but same extent of biological activity.
In pharmacology, the IU (alternatively abbreviated UI) is a unit of measurement for the
amount of a substance, based on measured biological activity (or effect). It is used for
vitamins, hormones, some drugs, vaccines, blood products and similar biologically active
substances.
The use of IU is also connected with nutrition and nutritional requirements for human
species (and also for animals and all kind of living organisms), aiming to provide
adequate diet that will include the needed amount of a substance, mineral or factor
essencial to life. So, if a specified factor is suspected of being essential for the growth or
maintenance of an organism, a systematic series of procedures at the biological level
must be used to determine its function, effects of deprivation, and quantitative
requirements in various organisms. The results will then be expressed in terms of IU of
these factors.
Various units of biological potency are used in pharmacology. For example, a dose of
200 IU of an antibiotic has a certain amount of bacteria-fighting ability, but it might have
a mass of 20 milligrams from one manufacturer and 40 from another. The size of the unit
for any factor (like vitamins, hormones, drugs, vaccines, blood products) varies with the
substance used to provide biological effect of that factor and is presently set by the
Expert Committee on Biological Standardization of the World Health Organization
(WHO). It is to say that the precise definition of one IU differs from substance to
substance and is established by the Expert Committee on Biological Standardization of
the WHO. The Committee provides a reference preparation of a certain substance, then
arbitrarily sets the number of IUs contained in that preparation, and specifies a biological
procedure to compare other preparations to that reference preparation.
The goal of this procedure is that different preparations that have the same biological
effect will contain the same number of IUs.
An International Unit is standardized by defining a test method and providing a reference
standard, an actual preparation of the substance having a known activity. Suppose, for
example, one wants to determine how many IUs are in a given amount of a preparation
of an antibiotic, and that WHO says one gram of the reference standard for that antibiotic
has an activity of 500 IU. The amount of the preparation being tested that inhibits the
growth of bacteria in the test to the same extent as one gram of the reference standard
will contain 500 IU of the antibiotic. Note that the assay is biological, not chemical.
Measuring the size of a dose in terms of its biological effect rather than as a specific
weight of pure substance solved a number of problems: sometimes it wasn't known
exactly which chemical had the effect; sometimes the preparation (for example, material
produced by fermentation) contained a number of chemicals each of which produced the
effect but in varying degrees; sometimes the amount was so small it could not be assayed
quantitatively by the methods of the day.
Later, quantitative analysis of pharmacologicals became much more precise and
sensitive. With new methods it was possible to detect and determine the actual mass of
chemicals in very small concentrations. Once the substance responsible for an effect has
been isolated, identified, and prepared in a form that allows it to be completely
characterized by chemical and physical properties, the biological assay is no longer
needed and the International Unit for that substance is generally discontinued and stating
the actual weight is preferred to using IU.
Some examples of old international units and their modern equivalents are:
One IU of Vitamin A = 0.3 micrograms of retinol or 0.6 micrograms of beta-carotene.
One IU of Vitamin C = 50 microgram Vitamin C
One IU of Vitamin D = 0.025 micrograms of Vitamin D (cholecalciferol/ ergocalciferol)
One IU of Vitamin E = 0.91 milligram of synthetic dl-alpha-tocopherol acetate or
0.667 milligrams of natural d-alpha-tocopherol.
One IU of Insulin = 45.5 microgram (1/22 milligram exactly) pure crystalline insulin
Some common conversions:
Vitamin A 1 mg = 2,907 IU of Vitamin A acetate OR
1,818 IU of Vitamin A palmitate
Beta Carotene 1 mg = 1,667 IU of Beta Carotene
Vitamin D 1 mg = 40,000 IU of Vitamin D ( D2 or D3)
Vitamin E 1 mg = 1.1 IU of dl-alpha tocopheryl acetate Synthetic
Vitamin E 1 mg = 1.49 IU of d-alpha tocopherol Natural
For some substances, the equivalent mass of one IU is later established, and the IU is
then officially abandoned for that substance. However, the unit often remains in use
nevertheless, because it is convenient. For example, Vitamin E exists in a number of
different forms, all having different biological activities. Rather than specifying the
precise type and mass of the particular vitamin E substance in a preparation, for the
purposes of pharmacology it is sufficient to simply specify the number of IUs of vitamin
E that preparation has.
• IU, despite its name, is not part of the International System of Units used in physics
and chemistry.
• The IU should not be confused with the enzyme unit, which is also known as the
"International unit of enzyme activity" and is abbreviated as U.
• IU is analogous with the United States Pharmacopeia unit (USP) that also is based on
measured biological activities. In the US, the reference standards are produced and
released under the authority of the United States Pharmacopeia Convention. USP
Units and the International Units of potency are usually identical.
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