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 attractive carbamazepine (Tegretol) to mechanism seizures may be at a measure increased gamble of having an infant with spina bifida, a budding sanctum finds. Spina bifida is a train in which the bones of the spinal column do not close but the spinal rope remains in place, usually with flay covering the defect advair diskus drug. Most children will miss lifelong treatment for problems arising from spoil to the spinal cord and spinal nerves.



And "For women with epilepsy, confiscation control during pregnancy is very important," said clue researcher Lolkje de Jong-van den Berg, from the splitting of drugstore at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. "Our investigate can help in decisions regarding whether carbamazepine should be the analgesic of choice in pregnancy" fat tumblr. However, the best opportunity regarding treatment can be chosen only on an individual foundation by the woman and her neurologist before pregnancy, weighing the benefits of epilepsy mastery against the risk of birth defects, de Jong-van den Berg said.



The communication is published in the Dec 3, 2010 online printing of the BMJ. For the study, de Jong-van den Berg's side reviewed existing investigating to conclude the peril of birth defects among women winsome Tegretol. The researchers found that infants of women compelling Tegretol were 2,6 times more tenable to have spina bifida, compared with women not captivating any anti-epileptic medication.



However, the risk associated with Tegretol was less than with another anti-epileptic drug- valproic acid (Depakene). In fact, Tegretol was less dicey than valproic acid when it came to other parentage defects such as hypospadias, where a boy's urinary beginning develops in the indecorous her of the penis or in the scrotum. "Carbamazepine is specifically tied up to an increased risk of spina bifida," de Jong-van den Berg said. "But you have to tower in feeling that the absolute risk is small".



For Tegretol bewitched in the first trimester, the overall jeopardy of a major malformation was 3,3 percent, the meditate on authors reported. The same group of researchers found in another study, published this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, that women winning valproic acid were six times more acceptable to have an infant with spina bifida and seven times more odds-on have an infant with hypospadias, compared with women using other anti-epileptic drugs.



The researchers accede with a exhortation from the American Academy of Neurology that valproic acid should be avoided in pregnancy if possible. Dr Orrin Devinsky, helmsman of the Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center, said that "for women of childbearing age, these drugs state a risk".



Women straits to authority the endanger and better of these drugs, he explained. Women with epilepsy fundamental to buttress on an anti-epileptic slip while they are pregnant, Devinsky said. "The jeopardize of seizure to themselves and potentially to their fetus is greater than the hazard of anti-epileptic drugs," he added.



There are other drugs, specifically lamotrigine (Lamictal) and levetiracetam (Keppra). However, there is unimportant material on any dangers associated with these drugs during pregnancy, Devinsky noted. Another expert, Dr Kimford Meador, a professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine, said women emergency to be versed the risks associated with Tegretol buy eflornithine liquid. "If a helpmeet is of childbearing future and you are prescribing this drug, that's when the chit-chat needs to occur," Meador said.