Daunomycin, an antibiotic used in the clinical management of acute leukemia, produces a delayed, lethal cardiac toxicity. The lethality is dose and schedule dependent; histopathologic changes induced by the drug have been described in heart, lung, and kidney from hamsters in both single and multiple dose studies. Mice given a single intravenous dose of daunomycin (10 mg/kg) die 6-7 days later. Drug distribution studies indicate that the rodents excrete most of a single dose of the drug as daunomycin and metabolite within 48 hours after dosage (M. A. Asbell, personal communication).Myocardium from the ventricles of 6 moribund BDF1 mice which had received a single intravenous dose of daunomycin (10 mg/kg), and from controls dosed with physiologic saline, was fixed in glutaraldehyde and prepared for electron microscopy.
