Keppra XR (Levetiracetam) from Maple Leaf Medications.

Know about Keppra

Keppra is a medication that has the active ingredient levetiracetam. The medication helps stabilize electrical activity in your brain. Your brain and nerves are made of several nerve cells, which convey messages to each other using electrical signals.

If these electrical signals are not regulated, your brain and nerves will not function properly. When the brain receives irregular and repetitive electrical signals, it leads to disruption in normal functioning, causing you to become over-stimulated.

Treatment with Keppra

Keppra is used to treat epilepsy in both adults and children from the age of one month. The medication can also be used for people aged 16 and older, who have been recently diagnosed with epilepsy. Apart from treating partial seizures with or without secondary generalized seizures, the medication also treats primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures in adults and children aged 12 years and myoclonic seizures in adults and children aged 12 with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy.

Recommended Dosage of Keppra

Keppra is available in four different strengths, 250 mg, 500 mg, 750 mg, and 1,000 mg. You can take its tablet form or oral solution, which is available in a dose of 100 mg. You need to swallow the tablets with a glass of water, whereas the oral solution can be mixed with water.

Your doctor may start you on a low dose of 250 mg to be taken two times each day. Your doctor may increase your dose to 500 mg to be taken twice each day after two weeks. Your doctor may increase your dose,  based on your response to the treatment. The maximum dose your doctor can prescribe you is 1,500 mg to be taken two times each day.

Your doctor may even add the medication to another treatment you are getting for epilepsy. The starting dose in people over the age of 12, weighing over 110 pounds is 500 mg, to be taken two times each day and can be gradually increased to 1,500 mg.

In people between the ages of 6 months and 17 years who weigh less than 110 pounds, the initial dose is 10 mg per pound to be taken two times each day and can be gradually increased to 30 mg. In babies aged between 1 and 6 months, the initial dose of the oral solution is 7 mg to be taken two times each day.

FAQs about Keppra