[Interactions of mood stabilizers].

This review on the drug-drug interactions of mood stabilizers is aimed to be practical and clinically relevant. Polypharmacy has became the most frequent approach in the treatment of bipolar disorders, and patients given with a long term treatment are expected to suffer occasionally medical intercurrences, which in turn lead to prescriptions of other drugs. Both factors render a possibility of drug-drug interactions rather frequent. Two actual clinical vignettes will be given, illustrating clinical situations in which drug interactions may often occur. It will be reviewed the main drug-drug interactions reported with lithium, carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, valproate, lamotrigine, gabapentin and topiramate, and also some pharmacokinetic aspects of mood stabilizers that are important in order to understand the possibility of interactions.