ABSTRACT
It is difficult to think of a disease which has benefited more than epilepsy from advances in clinical pharmacological knowledge. The contribution of clinical pharmacology to an improved treatment of epilepsy originated in the late 1960s with the demonstration that the pharmacokinetics of anti epileptic drugs (AEDs) show a large variability, and that this plays a major role in determining interindividual differences in drug response (Perucca and Richens, 1981). This, in turn, led to the development of therapeutic drug monitoring as an aid for the individualisation of dosage and to a greater understanding of the role of genetic, developmental and environ mental factors affecting the kinetics of anti-epileptic drugs. This inform ation has been applied on a vast scale to rationalise treatment schedules and to improve the quality of care for people with epilepsy (Eadie, 1998; Jannuzzi et al.9 2000).
