Use Of Medicines For Epilepsy During Pregnancy Can Cause A Risk To The Child.
Pregnant women with epilepsy who are compelling carbamazepine (Tegretol) to device seizures may be at a minor extent increased hazard of having an infant with spina bifida, a further study finds. Spina bifida is a get in which the bones of the spine do not close but the spinal line remains in place, usually with skin covering the defect skin care with peptides. Most children will stress lifelong treatment for problems arising from devastation to the spinal cord and spinal nerves.

And "For women with epilepsy, paroxysm control during pregnancy is very important," said pass researcher Lolkje de Jong-van den Berg, from the borderline of pharmacy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. "Our weigh can help in decisions regarding whether carbamazepine should be the drug of superior in pregnancy". However, the best option regarding treatment can be chosen only on an personal basis by the woman and her neurologist before pregnancy, weighing the benefits of epilepsy put down against the risk of birth defects, de Jong-van den Berg said.

The write-up is published in the Dec 3, 2010 online number of the BMJ. For the study, de Jong-van den Berg's duo reviewed existing fact-finding to determine the risk of birth defects among women fetching Tegretol. The researchers found that infants of women fascinating Tegretol were 2,6 times more likely to have spina bifida, compared with women not alluring 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 perilous than valproic acid when it came to other family defects such as hypospadias, where a boy's urinary crack develops in the out of place part of the penis or in the scrotum. "Carbamazepine is specifically coordinate to an increased risk of spina bifida," de Jong-van den Berg said. "But you have to commemorate in mind that the absolute danger is small".

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

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

Women call for to steady the jeopardy and benefit of these drugs, he explained. Women with epilepsy poverty to stay on an anti-epileptic drug while they are pregnant, Devinsky said. "The gamble of seizure to themselves and potentially to their fetus is greater than the peril of anti-epileptic drugs," he added.

There are alternative drugs, specifically lamotrigine (Lamictal) and levetiracetam (Keppra). However, there is mean observations 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 be in want of to be familiar with the risks associated with Tegretol vimax cock growth e. "If a moll is of childbearing passive and you are prescribing this drug, that's when the conversation needs to occur," Meador said.