Gold pharmacokinetics in breast milk and serum of a lactating woman.

During 20 weeks of aurothioglucose therapy, gold in a mother's serum and breast milk and her nursing infant's serum and urine were measured. The mother's steady state plasma gold was 4.05 mg/l; it was 0.041 mg/l in breast milk. Only 0.0255 mg gold appeared in the breast milk/24 h. We calculated that only 0.1785 mg gold (0.71% of the weekly dose) would appear in the breast milk over a week. No gold (less than 5 X 10(-7) mg/l) was found in the infant's plasma or urine. It is very unlikely that more than minute amounts of gold are absorbed from the mother's breast milk when breast feeding an infant.