Oral rapid loading of valproic acid--an alternative to the usual saturation scheme?

Valproic acid (VPA) is considered to be a drug of first choice for the therapy of generalized and focal epilepsies. Due to its broad field of application and its good compatibility, VPA is one of the most frequently prescribed antiepileptic drugs (AED) worldwide. Previous studies have examined the safety and tolerability of rapid intravenous-loaded VPA in the treatment of epilepsy and status epilepticus, but rapid oral loading has not been evaluated in paediatrics systematically in the past. The standard titration scheme takes 10-14 days, some physicians prefer a slower titration of up to 4 weeks. At many institutes, especially children are treated as inpatients until the desired dosage is reached. This causes high costs to the health system and is very inconvenient for the families affected. We have developed a new loading scheme to achieve a therapeutic serum level on the third day of treatment, in order to minimize the time between the beginning of the therapy and reaching the therapeutic serum level. This is the first attempt at doing this with VPA for children with epilepsy.