Add the diluent down the vial wall rather than directly onto the cake. Peptides are surface-active and shear at an air–liquid interface, so a jet of water into a lyophilised puck generates foam, and foam is aggregated protein at the interface, not just air.
The order of operations matters: temperature first, then diluent measurement, then injection, then gentle dissolution, then labeling.
Dead space by syringe type
| Configuration | Dead volume | Loss at 5 mg/mL | Over 20 draws |
|---|
| Fixed-needle insulin syringe | 3–5 µL | 15–25 µg | 0.3–0.5 mg |
| Low-dead-space, detachable | <2 µL | <10 µg | <0.2 mg |
| Standard luer-lock + 30G | 35–60 µL | 175–300 µg | 3.5–6 mg |
| Luer-lock + 21G drawing needle | 70–100 µL | 350–500 µg | 7–10 mg |
On the detail: photograph the vial against a matte black card with a single point light source off to one side, not with a flash from the front.
The caveat on all of this is that it assumes the vial contains what the label says.
The practical summary: fine gauge, gentle swirl, diluent down the wall, room temperature before drawing, and check the syringe scale.
edited 7 Feb 2026 by rota_site — removed a claim I could not source
The arithmetic checks out. I ran the same numbers and got the same result. – dermot_kiely 6 months ago add a comment