Abstract
A relationship, if any, between oral doses of diphenylhydantoin(DPH) and serum levels ofDPH in 105 epileptic children treated with DPH only or DPH with phenobarbital (PB) was investigated.
Patients were divided into 4 groups according to their ages, namely, A: 0-2, B: 3-6, C: 7-11, and D: over 12 years old. There were statistically significant correlations between oral doses and serum levels of DPH in each group (p<0.01). Regression lines of oral doses against serum levels of DPH were calculated for eachgroup using the least-squares method. It wasfound that slopes of these regression lines were getting steeper with an advance in ages of patients.
Daily doses of DPH maintaining 10μg/ml of serum DPH levels, which has been previously reported to be effective to prevent seizures wereobtained from the regression lines which were obtained in the present experiment for individual groups: that is, 14.2mg per kg of body weightfor group A, 8.8mg for B, 7.3mg for C and 5.2mg for D. These results indicate that in the case ofyounger patients it is necessary to administratelarger doses of DPH than those recommendedusually.
In the case of children treated with both DPH and PB, serum levels of DPH were found to belower than those in group of children treated with DPH alone.
