What is the therapeutic range of Depakote for seizures?
The best measure of the effectiveness of an anti-seizure drug is the smallest number of seizures over time with the least amount of side effects. To help patients find the “right” dose of medication to achieve this goal, blood levels are used. Blood level ranges have been established for most of the anti-seizure drugs. Theoretically, a person whose blood level is within the “therapeutic range” is likely to see a drop in the number of seizures and not have drug toxicity. The blood level ranges for the different anti-seizure medications were developed using large numbers of patients. However, an individual’s response to any given blood level is highly variable. What is an effective and well-tolerated level for one person may be too high or too low for someone else. Also, there are a number of drug interactions seen with anti-seizure medications. These can increase the likelihood of side effects even if the person has low or normal blood levels of anti-seizure drugs. After taking a dose o
