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National Study To Assess Impact Of Anti-Seizure Medications On Unborn Children

Date:
January 12, 2001
Source:
Medical College Of Georgia
Summary:
About 24,000 children in the United States are born each year to women with epilepsy and the vast majority are fine, but a national study aims to further level the playing field. Researchers want to know if the medicines the mothers-to-be must take to control seizures have a negative, lasting impact on their babies’ developing brains.
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About 24,000 children in the United States are born each year to women with epilepsy and the vast majority are fine, but a national study aims to further level the playing field.

Researchers want to know if the medicines the mothers-to-be must take to control seizures have a negative, lasting impact on their babies’ developing brains.

The study will follow 285 women taking one of the three most commonly prescribed anti-seizure medications from their first trimester until their children are several years old. Researchers want to determine what impact phenytoin (Dilantin), carbamazepine (Tegretol) and valproate (Depakote) have on the children’s ability to think and learn.

"A really important aspect of this study is to find out if there is a difference between these drugs; are some of these drugs better for the child long-term than other drugs?" said Dr. Kimford J. Meador, chief of the Medical College of Georgia Section of Behavioral Neurology and principal investigator on the $6 million, five-year study funded by the National Institutes of Health. "If that’s true, then we will want women to try to use the drugs which have reduced adverse effects. It would dramatically alter how we prescribe drugs. But right now we don’t know if it’s true.

"We do know that the vast majority of women with epilepsy have healthy children," he said. "We are talking about a relatively small increased risk, but we want to reduce that risk as much as possible. We want them to have the same lack of risk other children have."

Dr. Meador emphasized that most women with epilepsy can have healthy children and that they should continue taking their medication while pregnant.

"In a woman who has significant seizures, the risk from the seizures themselves is worse than the risk of the drugs," Dr. Meador said. "The number-one reason for miscarriage late in pregnancy for women with epilepsy is trauma (resulting from a seizure)."

But he wants to objectively assess whether these drugs, which control seizures by reducing neuronal excitability in the mother, impact normal nerve growth and connections in her developing baby’s brain. "During development, that excitability may be very important in terms of how nerves grow and connect," Dr. Meador said.

Also, development may be impacted by free radicals released by these drugs which bind to protein in the body’s basic building blocks of DNA and RNA. "The body typically can repair some of this type of damage, but if it gets overloaded with damage it may not be able to and there may be long-term consequences," Dr. Meador said. "But it’s also possible that the children rebound from these drug effects and it really doesn’t have a long-term effect."

There is solid information that these types of drugs pass through the placenta from the mother to the baby where they double the 2-3 percent risk of birth defects, such as spina bifida, that occurs in the general population.

But pre-pregnancy planning, such as ensuring that women take multivitamins and folate supplements, can minimize the anatomical birth-defect risk an

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Materials provided by Medical College Of Georgia. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Cite This Page:

Medical College Of Georgia. "National Study To Assess Impact Of Anti-Seizure Medications On Unborn Children." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 January 2001. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/01/010111195500.htm>.
Medical College Of Georgia. (2001, January 12). National Study To Assess Impact Of Anti-Seizure Medications On Unborn Children. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 27, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/01/010111195500.htm
Medical College Of Georgia. "National Study To Assess Impact Of Anti-Seizure Medications On Unborn Children." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/01/010111195500.htm (accessed March 27, 2024).

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