Use Of Medicines For Epilepsy During Pregnancy Can Cause A Risk To The Child

Use Of Medicines For Epilepsy During Pregnancy Can Cause A Risk To The Child.
Pregnant women with epilepsy who are taking carbamazepine (Tegretol) to oversight seizures may be at a marginally increased hazard of having an infant with spina bifida, a recent learn finds. Spina bifida is a shape in which the bones of the spine do not close but the spinal rope remains in place, usually with skin covering the defect impotence treatment. Most children will neediness lifelong treatment for problems arising from wound to the spinal cord and spinal nerves.

And "For women with epilepsy, taking control during pregnancy is very important," said leading position researcher Lolkje de Jong-van den Berg, from the classification of pharmacy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. "Our look can help in decisions regarding whether carbamazepine should be the drug of choice in pregnancy". However, the best privilege regarding treatment can be chosen only on an individual point of departure by the woman and her neurologist before pregnancy, weighing the benefits of epilepsy hold back against the risk of birth defects, de Jong-van den Berg said.

The backfire is published in the Dec 3, 2010 online copy of the BMJ. For the study, de Jong-van den Berg's yoke reviewed existing examine to determine the risk of birth defects among women taking Tegretol. The researchers found that infants of women taking Tegretol were 2,6 times more favoured to have spina bifida, compared with women not taking any anti-epileptic medication.

However, the jeopardize associated with Tegretol was less than with another anti-epileptic drug- valproic acid (Depakene). In fact, Tegretol was less dangerous than valproic acid when it came to other origination defects such as hypospadias, where a boy's urinary birth develops in the opposite part of the penis or in the scrotum. "Carbamazepine is specifically common to an increased risk of spina bifida," de Jong-van den Berg said. "But you have to store in percipience that the absolute risk is small".

Some Antiepileptic Drugs During Pregnancy Can Have A Negative Impact On The Development Of The CNS Of The Teens.
Teens born to women who took two or more epilepsy drugs while club fared worse in nursery school than peers with no prenatal communication to those medications, a philanthropic Swedish survey has found. Also, teens born to epileptic mothers in normal tended to record debase in several subjects, including math and English get more info. The findings stick earlier research that linked prenatal unveiling to epilepsy drugs, particularly valproic acid (brand names embrace Depakene and Depakote), to negative effects on a child's cleverness to process information, solve problems and make decisions.

And "Our results suggest that baring to several anti-epileptic drugs in utero may have a unenthusiastic effect on a child's neurodevelopment," said study author Dr Lisa Forsberg of Karolinska University Hospital. The bookwork was published online Nov 4, 2010 in Epilepsia.

The workroom was retrospective, gist that it looked backwards in time. Using nationalist medical records and a study conducted by a native hospital, Forsberg and her team identified women with epilepsy who gave origination between 1973 and 1986, as well as those who used anti-epileptic drugs during pregnancy. The gang then obtained records of children's school conduct from a registry that provides grades for all students leaving school at 16, the seniority that mandatory education ends in Sweden.

The researchers identified 1,235 children born to epileptic mothers. Of those, 641 children were exposed to one anti-epileptic analgesic and 429 to two or more; 165 children had no known aspect to the medications. The researchers then compared those children's prepare scene to that of all other children born in Sweden (more than 1,3 million) during that 13-year period.

The teens exposed to more than one anti-epileptic soporific in the womb were less favourite to get a definitive grade than those in the general population, said Forsberg. Not receiving a unalterable grade generally means not attending ill-defined school because of mental deficits, she explained.