Comparison between dried blood spot and plasma sampling for therapeutic drug monitoring of antiepileptic drugs in children with epilepsy: A step towards home sampling.

Objectives: To investigate if dried blood spots could be used for therapeutic drug monitoring of the antiepileptic drugs, carbamazepine, lamotrigine and valproic acid in children with epilepsy.

Methods: Fingerprick blood samples from 46 children at a neuropediatric outpatient clinic was collected on filterpaper at the same time as capillary plasma sampling. A validated dried blood spot liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method for carbamazepine, lamotrigine and valproic acid was compared with the routine plasma laboratory methods.