More Confusing Clarifications About Phosphate

The molecular formula of the salt, discussed in the last posting, would actually be Na2HPO4, but the conversion factor is roughly the same. I was using the percent-phosphorus-in-phosphate conversion factor of 30.97/94.973 = 0.3261. That's another potentially confusing aspect of this (it's confusing), given that the inappropriate conversion factor, used to interconvert "phosphorus" or "phosphate" in mg/dL and "phosphorus" or "phosphate" in mM, is 0.3229. I honestly wonder if the dosages don't get screwed up in some of these studies, because the way the authors of so many of the articles have played "fast and loose" with the conversions and units and molar masses means that one cannot be sure what the authors are actually talking about, even when they say "phosphate" or "phosphorus" in mM.

It's not even the faults of any researchers, though. If I were going to conduct clinical research with some sort of phosphate preparation, I would almost need some sort of independent assessment of the actual contents of the preparation. I've seen articles in which both the elemental phosphorus and the phosphate amounts were stated and in which the molarity conversions made no sense. It's really not possible to conduct scientific research under those conditions. I've never had trouble figuring out molar conversions, such as in all of the articles on serum folate or intracellular total folates, etc. Those conversions always made sense in the articles, and all the other conversions I've ever done have made perfect sense. All that's usually required is to sit down for 10 minutes and write it out on a sheet of paper or in a word processing document. But I've tried multiple times with some of these numbers, and I usually end up either not knowing what the units are actually referring to or getting bizarre numbers that don't make sense. Even with something like dosages of magnesium, given in the bizarre milliequivalents (mEq), it's possible to fairly easily understand that. But not with a lot of this. The only thing (aside from foods, because it appears that food "phosphorus" amounts are, in fact, phosphate amounts, as discussed in past postings) I can know the precise phosphate content of is ATP disodium. Well, there might be an issue with the crystal structure having a different stoichiometry, because the molar mass given by some sources differs very slightly from the "calculated," added-up molar mass one gets from the periodic table. But that's not a problem.