Therapeutic drug monitoring in psychiatry: An important step in clinical practice.

ABSTRACT

TDM in psychiatry is a tool to optimize the therapeutic regimens in clinical practice. Psychopharmacology encompasses those drugs which metabolize and their metabolites also are active in the body. CYP-450 of antipsychotics is unique as the drugs are lipid soluble and the heterogeneous class of drugs act on different types of receptors and produce variable responses. Various techniques are involved to estimate the drug levels of those drugs. HPLC is a golden standard to assay the serum drug concentration of these drugs. The metabolites can also be assayed along with the parent drug. TDM of these drugs if applied at tertiary care, individualization of dosage regime of these drugs can help the outcomes of therapy and even drug-drug interaction can display the PK/PD nature of such drugs.