Therapeutic Drug Monitoring for Patients With Alzheimer Dementia to Improve Treatment With Donepezil

BACKGROUND Aiming to verify that therapeutic drug monitoring has the potential to optimize treatment with acetylcholine esterase inhibitors of patients with Alzheimer dementia, this study investigated whether serum concentrations of donepezil are associated with clinical improvement. METHODS Clinical improvement was measured using the clinical global impression (CGI) scale, and donepezil concentrations were measured in serum by a high-performance liquid chromatographic method with spectrophotometric detection. RESULTS In total, 206 serum samples from 106 patients (49.5% female) were retrospectively available for analysis. Patients included were treated under everyday conditions. Their mean …