Clonidine Extended Release (Kapvay)
Extended-release clonidine tablet for ADHD. It has a later peak and lower peak concentration than immediate-release clonidine and is not substitutable milligram-for-milligram.
Projected serum levels — 0.10 mg, twice daily
Maintenance schedule: 0.10 mg twice daily (oral).
Loading schedule: 0.24 mg on day 1, then 0.10 mg twice daily — reaching therapeutic levels sooner.
Modeled steady state after ~2 days: peak ≈ 0.13 mg, trough ≈ 0.10 mg body load. Population-based estimate over 15 days for a 0.10 mg dose at a 70 kg reference body mass — the interactive app scales curves to your doses, timing, and body mass.
Key facts
- Category
- Antihypertensive / Alpha-2 Agonist
- Route modeled
- Oral
- Model confidence
- inferred
- Half-life
- 13 h
- Common dose
- 0.10 mg
- Suggested maximum
- 0.40 mg/day
- Reference dose range
- 0.10–0.40 mg (single dose)
- Suggested cadence
- twice daily
- Validated against
- 0.10 mg oral — Cmax 0.000 mg/L at 6.5 h
Research behind this entry
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Clonidine in patients undergoing noncardiac surgery
Landmark POISE-2 trial (n=10,010) — perioperative clonidine did not reduce death or nonfatal MI after noncardiac surgery but significantly increased hypotension (RR 1.32) and nonfatal cardiac arrest (RR 3.18).…
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Clonidine withdrawal: mechanism and frequency of rebound hypertension
Definitive early study documenting the clonidine withdrawal phenomenon — rebound hypertension with plasma catecholamine surge, tachycardia, and subjective distress upon abrupt discontinuation. Demonstrated that the…
2 published studies referenced in the app, each with a plain-language summary.