Some drugs have low bioavailability due to their poor aqueous solubility and/or slow dissolution rate in biological fluids. Stiripentol (STP) is a novel anticonvulsant drug that is structurally unrelated to the currently available antiepileptics. It has poor aqueous solubility and its solubility has to be enhanced accordingly. Polyethyleneglycol 6000 (PEG-6000) is commonly utilized as a hydroph...

Medications used to treat and prevent seizures (antiepileptic medications, AEMs) have been commonly managed by therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) to optimize efficacy and avoid toxicity (Neels et al., 2004; Patsalos et al., 2008). TDM has been applied mostly to the firstgeneration AEMs that have been used clinically in the United States and Europe for several decades, namely carbamazepine, ethos...

We read with interest the article by Nicolai et al. who described four children with Dravet syndrome treated with valproic acid (VPA) and topiramate (TPM), who all developed transient hepatic injury shortly after introduction of acetaminophen in therapeutic dosage. Based on the time interval between fever, administration of acetaminophen, epileptic status and liver enzyme disturbances, the auth...

PURPOSE Stiripentol (STP) is currently an efficient drug for add-on therapy in infantile epilepsies because it improves the efficacy of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) through its potent inhibition of liver cytochromes P450. In addition, STP directly reduces seizures in several animal models of epilepsy, suggesting that it might also have anticonvulsive effects of its own. However, its underlying me...

Oral administration remains a significant challenge in regards to drugs with serious solubility and stability issues. This article aimed to investigate the suitability of nanoemulsions as oral carriers of stiripentol (STP), an acid-labile drug, for enhancement of stability and bioavailability. STP-loaded nanoemulsions (STP-NEs) were prepared by using a solvent-diffusion/ultrasonication techniqu...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of stiripentol (STP) add-on therapy to valproate and clobazam in patients with Dravet syndrome (DS) according to the presence of mutations in the sodium channel alpha-1 subunit gene (SCN1A). METHODS We performed direct sequencing to analyze SCN1A mutations in 32 patients with clinically confirmed with DS, and clas...

The GABAA receptor (GABAAR) is a major target of antiseizure drugs (ASDs). A variety of agents that act at GABAARs s are used to terminate or prevent seizures. Many act at distinct receptor sites determined by the subunit composition of the holoreceptor. For the benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and loreclezole, actions at the GABAAR are the primary or only known mechanism of antiseizure action. F...