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Q: Is Stavzor Equal to Depakote & Stavzor ER to Depakote ER?
Can you tell me anything about Stavzor new form of depokote what
advantage other than pill size and less stomach upset. The main concern of
course I have is weight gain as yrs ago i took those big pink pills and blew up
into goodyear blimp lol Is Stavzor equal to Depokote and is Stavzor er equal to
depokote er this is very confusing Can you clear this up?
Hello Linda --
Let’s see, Stavzor. Well, here in the U.S., we
have a generic version of Depakote now. We refer to it by the generic name,
divalproex. We even have a divalproex ER, the slow release (which causes
somewhat less initial trouble with nausea, though the old DR (direct release) is
not too bad, at least after a few days for most folks.
Stavzor, had to look that up. It appears to be a trade
name version of valproate, another trade name version of which is Depakene
(which we have here in the US). This one does bother people’s stomach quite a
bit more leading to more frequent stopping-the-medication. So I’ve used Depakote
for years until the generics came out, which was just recently (when the price
goes down eventually, which takes a while, that will be great; right how it’s
still rather expensive even for the generics, though not even in the same league
as the new antipsychotics).
But generic valproate ought to be very inexpensive.
It’s low cost would be the only reason to use it, I would think (so using a
trade name version, e.g. Stavzor, wouldn’t make much sense; but sometimes the
doctor just writes the old trade name with permission for the pharmacist to
switch to the generic).
In my experience there is a slightly lower problem with
weight gain with divalproex ER, i.e. the ER version of divalproex that used to
be Depakote ER until the generic became available (it is confusing, isn’t it).
But that may be mostly because the pills are not fully absorbed so the dose is
about 15% less, on average, than the face value of the pills. But I still just
use divalproex ER for everything now.
I hope that answers your question, or helps anyway.
Dr. Phelps
Published June, 2009
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