14 DAY TRIAL // Epileptic women that use multiple antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) to control their seizures during their pregnancy, risk causing poor school performance in their teenagers, according to a large population-based study, carried out by a research team from Karolinska University Hospital and the University of Lund in Sweden.
The researchers used data from the Medical Birth Register, Patient Register, and a local study at South Hospital, Stockholm, in order to identify epileptic women who gave birth between 1973 and 1986, as well as their anticonvulsant use during the 9 months of pregnancy.
Data concerning the children’s performance during the last year of compulsory school, at age 16, was gathered from the School Mark Registry.
When confronting data from all the registers, the Swedish team found 1,235 children with epileptic mothers using AEDs, and compared their school performance to that of all other kids born in Sweden in the same period (1,307,083).
641 kids were exposed to monotherapy, 429 to polytherapy and 165 to no known AED treatments, during pregnancy, AlphaGalileo reports.
Children who were exposed to two or more AEDs, had a very high risk of not receiving a final grade when finishing compulsory school, unlike those who had been exposed to only one anticonvulsant, mostly carbamazepine (CBZ) or phenytoin.
Before this research, there were several studies which suggested that the exposure to AEDs in the womb can permanently damage the exposed children, by causing cognitive and behavioral problems, malformations, psychomotor delay and low IQ, as for polytherapy, it was also considered to be more harmful than monotherapy.
This new study confirmed that polytherapy has more negative effects on neurodevelopment than monotherapy does, but it also said that teens exposed to monotherapy had a reduced chance of earning a “pass with excellence” grade, which means that even single AED use can affect higher cognitive function.
Lead study author Lisa Forsberg, MD, said that these “results suggest exposure to several AEDs in the womb may have a negative effect on the child’s neurodevelopment.
“If possible pregnant women should avoid using multiple anticonvulsants to treat their seizures.”
These findings appear online in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the International League Against Epilepsy.