Reassuring results seen for epilepsy in pregnancy
Preliminary results from the United Kingdom epilepsy and pregnancy register are encouraging, indicating that 95 per cent of babies born to women with epilepsy show no major congenital malformations.
The register included 3,301 pregnancies, with completed outcomes in 2,637.
The major malformation rate was 2.4 per cent in women taking no antiepileptic
drugs (95 per cent confidence interval, 0.9–6.0), increasing slightly
to 3.4 per cent in those taking monotherapy (2.7–4.4) and rising
to 6.5 per cent for polytherapy (5.0–9.4).
For individual drugs, results showed that the malformation rate was 2.3
per cent with carbamazepine (1.4–3.7), 5.9 per cent for sodium
valproate (4.3–8.2) and 2.1 per cent for lamotrigine (1.0–4.0).
Cardiac, neural tube, genitourinary and gastrointestinal tract abnormalities
were reported with all three drugs, and orofacial clefting and skeletal
abnormalities occurred with sodium valproate and carbamazepine.
The researchers, from the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, said: “The
results from this study are generally encouraging.” They added: “Although
the overall risk remains low, patients taking sodium valproate during
pregnancy appear to have a statistically significant increased risk of
having a child with a major malformation compared to those taking carbamazepine
or lamotrigine.”
The results were reported at last week’s International
Epilepsy Congress in Lisbon. |
